


sV '.y>. 



■?.-, 



^^^ ^''c^^ 






^ 



^^/. V^^^ 












^^' 



.^-^^' 



oX 



o5 /. 



^^^ V^^ 



O K 






^^f-^ ^^. 






x^^'^ 



'V- V 









-o- 



.x 



v^' 















s^-V. 



■^ \ 1 « 



,0 o^ 









>0 o^ 






u 4' 






'C 0' 



^. c-^ 






^..^' 

^^"^, 



^"* '^^ 









v\^^ 'c*- 



'>- V 



■x^" % 



"^. 



^. 









^<}- 






COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGLISH 



THOMAS DEKKER 



COLUMBIA 

UNIVERSITY PRESS 

SALES AGENTS 

NEW YORK : 

LEMCKE & BUECHNER 
3C-32 West 27TH Street 

LONDON : 
HENRY FROWDE 
Amen Corner, E.C. 

TORONTO : 

HENRY FROWDE 

25 Richmond Street, W. 



THOMAS DEKKER 

A STUDY 



BY 



MARY LELAND HUNT, Ph.D. 




THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1911 

All rights reserved 






'\Z 



Copyright, 191 1 
By The Columbia University Press 

Printed from type December, 191 1 



PRESS OF 

The new era printing Coupany 
Lancaster. Pa 



©CI.A303644 



This Monograph has been approved by the Department of Eng- 
lish and Comparative Literature in Columbia University as a contri- 
bution to knowledge worthy of publication. 

A. H. THORNDIKE, 

Secretary. 



TO MY MOTHER 



Vll 



PREFACE 

This study, tentative and incomplete as it is, would have no 
reason for existence if there had been any previous attempt to 
give a unified account of Dekker's life and personality, and if 
much of the criticism of the man and writer had not been dis- 
torted by an imperfect chronology or a partial knowledge of 
the facts. The object, then, has been to collect scattered ma- 
terial, including that furnished by Dekker himself, which has 
been much neglected, to arrange that material in chronological 
order, and to arrive at an understanding of the man. If the 
endeavor to understand has been colored by personal feeling, 
the reader is entreated to remember that a happy comradeship 
of three years is bound to leave some trace behind. 

My indebtedness to scholars in the field of Elizabethan litera- 
ture requires a word. The best outline of Dekker's life is to 
be found in the " Dictionary of National Biography " by A. H. 
Bullen, which in most respects agrees with that of Fleay. 
Memoirs of varying value are prefixed to Shepherd's edition of 
Dekker's " Dramatic Works," to Grosart's edition of the " Non- 
dramatic Works," and to the Mermaid edition of the " Best 
Plays." The plays are discussed in all extended accounts of 
the Elizabethan drama, especially by Ward, who implicitly and 
explicitly ranks them low, and by Schelling in the somewhat 
scattered fashion required by his scheme. The growing tend- 
ency towards appreciation is marked in the " Cambridge His- 
tory of English Literature " by an admirable article on a por- 
tion of Dekker's prose and by a sympathetic account of his 
life and plays, the latter however not overburdened with facts. 
Swinburne's essay, with all its need of shading and positive 
deduction, remains the best comprehensive view of Dekker's 
writings. Much gratitude is also due to students of special 
aspects of Dekker's work, notably to Mr. C. H. Herford and 
Mr. R. A. Small ; nor should the names of Mr, E. E. Stoll and 
Mr. F. E. Pierce be forgotten. Mr. Greg's edition of " Hens- 
lowe's Diary," text and commentary, has been very helpful. 



But my deepest obligations are to Professor Ashley Horace 
Thorndike, of Columbia University, to whom I owe, besides 
mention of the subject, much assistance, generously given and 
infinitely stimulating, whether by way of criticism or sug- 
gestion, and whose methods, gained first from his writings and 
afterwards in the lecture room, I have tried to follow, how- 
ever inadequately. 

I desire also to express my cordial thanks to Professor 
Charles M. Hathaway, Jr., of the United States Naval Acad- 
emy, who kindly read the manuscript, and from his special 
knowledge of Dekker gave me the benefit of many a helpful 
criticism; to Dr. E. H. Wright, of Columbia University, who 
carefully read my study; and to Dr. Carl Van Doren, also of 
Columbia University, who secured some valuable Dekker ma- 
terial from the British Museum that would otherwise have 
been inaccessible. 

M. L. H. 
New York City, 
August 10, 191 1. 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Pack 

I. Introduction i 

The point of view. Dekker in part his own biographer. His 
trustworthiness. His Grove of Bay Trees a record of enthu- 
siasms. His affection for Nash. His early intellectual en- 
vironment. 

II. Early Life 1 1 

Birth-place. Birth-date. Education and reading. A possible 
campaign in the Low Countries. Democracy. Habits. Tastes. 

III. The Earliest Plays 28 

Old Fortunatns. The Whore of Babylon. The Weakest Goeth 
to the Wall. 

IV. With Henslowe, i 598-1600 47 

The character of the connection. Number of plays. Pay. Col- 
laborators. Subjects of lost plays. Canaan's Calamity. The 
Sun's Darling. The Shoemaker's Holiday. Patient Grissill. » 

V. The Quarrel with Jonson. The Close of the 
Henslowe Period, 1601-1602 64 

An interrupted play. Jonson's Poetaster. Satiromastix. Sir 
Thomas Wyatt. Dekker the man between 1598 and 1602: his 
poverty, his friendships. 

VI. The Influence of Middleton 86 

The Magnificent Entertainment. Ode. New features in Dekker's 
plays. Realistic comedy in England, 1 598-1 604. Middleton. 
The Honest Whore. Westward Ho. Northward Ho. The 
Roaring Girl (out of chronological order). 

VII. The Period of Prose 115 

Dedications and prefaces. The Bachelor's Banquet. The Won- 
derful Year. The Double P. P. News from Hell. A Knight's 
Conjuring. The Seven Deadly Sins of London. Jests to Make 
You Merry. The Dead Term. The Bellman of London. Lan- 
thorn and Candlelight. Rowlands. A Strange Horse-race (out 
of chronological order). The Raven's Almanac. Work for 
Armorers. The Gull's Hornbook. Four Birds of Noah's Ark. 

VIII. 1610-1619 : Plays : Imprisonment 147 

Complaint of hard times. If It be not Good, the Devil is in 
It. The Virgin Martyr. Match Me in London. Troja Nova 

xi 



Xll 

Triumphans. Imprisonment. Letters to Alleyn. Of a Prison. 
Geflfray Mynshul, Dekker his Dream. 

IX. The Last Years ^/. 177 

Return to play-writing. The Witch of Edmonton. The Wonder 
of a Kingdom. The Noble Soldier. Penny-wise, Pound-foolish. 
A Rod for Runaways. Britannia's Honor. London's Teinpe. 
A lyric. A Prison narrative. 

X. Conclusion 198 

Bibliographical Note 205 

Index 208 



NOTE 

References to the plays are for the greater part to Shep- 
herd's four-volume edition of " The Dramatic Works of 
Thomas Dekker," published by Pearson, 1873; referred to 
under P., with the number of the volume and the page. Ex- 
ceptions are named in full. 

All references to " Patient Grissill " and, with two excep- 
tions, to the prose are to Grosart's five-volume edition of " The 
Non-dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker," 1884; referred to 
under G., with the number of the volume and the page. The 
two pamphlets not included in this collection are named in full. 

Fleay's article on Dekker in his " Biographical Chronicle of 
the English Drama " is indicated by Chr. 

Except in a few cases that will be readily understood, spell- 
ing and, where it has seemed desirable, punctuation and the use 
of capitals have been modernized. Dates are expressed in the 
new style. 



THOMAS DEKKER 

A STUDY 



K 



CHAPTER I 

Introduction 



We do not know the month, possibly not the year, in which 
Thomas Dekker was born ; we know still less about the date 
when he died ; and we are not certain that he was ever mar- 
ried. But we know many facts more important than these. 

We know, for instance, that he was a man of letters, who 
lived by his pen and in no other way, a consistent follower of 
the Muses, " pure maids but poor ones,"^ as he says in his 
punning fashion. As early as 1604 he gaily spoke of himself 
as one " whose crest is a pen and inkhorn ; "^ and five or six 
years later, in another epistle, after dividing writers into two 
classes, those whose books are not worth so much brown 
paper, and those who, " being free of Wit's merchant-ventur- 
ers," make, for gain only, some five or six voyages to the press 
every new moon, and who " spit nothing but ink and speak 
nothing but poem," he continues : " I would keep company with 
neither of these two mad-men if I could avoid them, yet I take 
the last to be the wisest and less dangerous : for sithence all 
the arrows that men shoot in the world fly to two marks only, 
either pleasure or profit, he is not much to be condemned that, 
having no more acres to live upon than those that lie in his 
head, is every hour hammering out one piece or other out of 
this rusty Iron age, sithence the golden and silver globes of the 

^ Epis.-Ded,, A Knight's Conjuring, ed. E. F. Rimbault, Spen. Soc. Pub., 
Vol. 5. 

" Epis.-Ded., The Wonderful Year, G., I, 76. 
2 1 



world are so locked up that a scholar can hardly be suffered to 
behold them."3 

Again, we know, with few intervals, what Dekker, the man 
of letters, was doing from January, 1598, down to 1632, when, 
in a merry little song of appreciation, we hear his voice for the 
last time. 

We know, besides, certain definite facts about the inner life 
of the man: what he liked and disliked, what he loved and 
hated; for his essentially lyrical temperament constantly re- 
peats its utterances in personal prose and in dramatic verse, and 
when specific thoughts and emotions come constantly to the 
surface, their opposites never, we may assume that they were 
permanent. Some of them are well known: his pity for 
maimed soldiers, for poor scholars, for the victims of usurers ; 
his horror of cruelty; the democracy of his outlook that at 
times included even women in its scope. We likewise know 
his love of books and music, his liking for law, and his passion 
for poetry and religion. 

We often know his mood at the time of writing or printing, 
for to most of his prose pieces and to some of his plays are 
prefixed dedications or prefaces or both, which, though fre- 
quently veiled under whimsical language, are full of person- 
ality, and are, besides, often of special significance when taken 
in connection with the known facts of his life — a trustworthy 
record, for they show anger when we know from other sources 
that he had reason to feel anger ; depression and pain, when we 
know, again from other sources, that the circumstances of his 
life might well arouse these emotions; fatigue and boredom, 
when he might naturally have had such feelings. We may 
therefore be sure that his more usual note of gayety and buoy- 
ancy is an honest expression of joy in life and work, and 
equally sure that his religious faith was just what he affirms it 
to be. However silent other dramatists may be upon the 
question of the destiny of the soul, Dekker makes his position 
perfectly clear in both prose and verse. He writes in a typical 
passage : 

' Epis.-Ded., Lanthorn and Candlelight, G., Ill, 178-179. 



" You see, therefore, how dreadful a fellow Death is, making fools even 
of wise men, and cowards of the most valiant ; yea, in such a base slavery 
hath it bound men's senses that they have no power to look higher than 
their own roofs, but seems by their Turkish and barbarous actions to believe 
that there is no felicity after this life, and that, like beasts, their souls 
shall perish with their bodies."* 

This religion did not fail him in the one tragic period of his 
life, and it is present in most of his works, from the young 
austerity of " Fortunatus " to the wise and sweet humanity — 
when all the world was bigoted — of "The Witch of Edmon- 
ton." Whatever his life may have been and however much 
his writings may have conceded to low popular tastes, he be- 
lieved always that it was base to do evil, and, in a half-pagan 
age, that there was a happy future for the innocent and good. 
To him religion and poetry were the main facts of life — a 
creed that never shows the way to wealth although it may to a 
sort of beatitude. Curiously enough, Whipple, who was much 
impressed by Dekker's " wretchedness," felt forced to apply 
to him, fittingly as I think, his own words spoken of Fortu- 
natus, " all felicity up to the brims." 

In the contemporary records of Elizabethan literature, the 
name of Dekker does not appear until January, 1598, but our 
certain knowledge of some of his experiences and ideals goes 
back to earlier days. During those stirring years of England 
when to glory of adventure and glory of war was added the 
thrill of new shaping forces in literature, he was young and 
keenly sensitive to what was going on about him, both to the 
outburst of love for country and queen that followed the 
defeat of the Armada, and to the dramatic influences that be- 
tween 1587 and 1598 were transforming the traditions of the 
stage; and he was alive to the new melodies then in the air. 
They were the same forces and melodies that at about the 
same time were influencing Shakespere, older than Dekker, 
but not, like the younger man, born and brought up in London 
where they were exhibited and felt earliest. His enthusiasms ' 
may easily be gathered from allusion, reference, and imitation y 
in his plays, but on one occasion he spoke out directly. In 

*The Wonderful Year, G., I, 145. 



i6o7 he wrote "A Knight's Conjuring," altered from his 
" News from Hell," published the preceding year, a sequel to 
Nash's "Pierce Penniless, His Supplication to the Devil." 
Among the changes is an added chapter on the abode of the 
blest, " fortunatae insulae." From this I quote almost the 
whole of the passage about the bay-trees, partly for the purpose 
just indicated and partly to show, at the outset, Dekker's atti- 
tude, constant and life-long, towards poetry. It was written 
when he was approximately thirty-five years old. 

" Beyond all these places is there a grove, which stands by itself like an 
island ; for a stream that makes music in the running clasps it round about 
like a hoop girdle of crystal : laurels grow so thick on all the banks of it 
that lightning itself, if it came thither, hath no power to pierce through 
them. It seems, without, a desolate and unfrequented wood, for those 
within are retired into themselves, but from them came forth such har- 
monious sounds that birds build nests only in the trees there to teach tunes 
to their young ones prettily. This is called the Grove of Bay trees, and to 
this consort-room resort none but the children of Phoebus, poets and 
musicians : the one creates the ditty and gives it the life or number, the 
other lends it voice and makes it speak music. When these happy spirits 
sit asunder, their bodies are like so many stars, and when they join together 
in several troops, they show like so many heavenly constellations. Full of 
pleasant bowers and quaint arbours is all this walk. In one of which, old 
Chaucer, reverend for priority, blithe in cheer, buxom in his speeches and 
benign in his haviour, is circled round with all the makers or poets of his 
time, their hands leaning on one another's shoulders, and their eyes fixed 
seriously upon his, whilst their ears are all tied to his tongue by the golden 
chains of his numbers ; for here, like Evander's mother, they spake aH in 
verse ; no Attic eloquence is so sweet : their language is so pleasing to the 
gods that they utter their oracles in none other. 

" Grave Spenser was no sooner entered into this chapel of Apollo but 
these elder fathers of the divine fury gave him a laurel and sung his 
welcome : Chaucer called him his son and placed him at his right hand. 
All of them, at a sign given by the whole choir of the muses that brought 
him thither, closing up their lips in silence and tuning all their ears for 
attention, to hear him sing out the rest of his Faerie Queen«'s praises. 

" In another company sat learned Watson, industrious Kyd, ingenious 
Atchlow, and, though he had been a player moulded out of their pens, yet 
because he had been their lover and a register to the Muses, inimitable 
Bentley : these were likewise carousing to one another at the holy well, 
some of them singing psans to Apollo, some of them hymns to the rest of 
the gods, whilst Marlowe, Greene, and Peele had got under the shades of a 
large vine, laughing to see Nash, that was but newly come to their college. 



still haunted with the sharp and satirical spirit that followed him here 
upon earth : for Nash inveighed bitterly, as he had wont to do, against 
dry-fisted patrons, accusing them of his untimely death, because if they had 
given his muse that cherishment which she most worthily deserved, he had 
been fed to his dying day on fat capons, burnt sack and sugar and not so 
desperately have ventured his life and shortened his daysi by keeping com- 
pany with pickle herrings. ... He had no sooner spoken this, but in comes 
Chettle sweating and blowing by reason of his fatness ; to welcome whom, 
because he was of old acquaintance, all rose up and fell presently on their 
knees, to drink a health to all the lovers of Helicon: in doing which they 
made such a mad noise that all this conjuring, which is past, being but a 
dream, I suddenly started up, and am now awake."' 

There are three groups, it will be noticed ; the first painted 
with a hand that is reverent yet true, the second with less 
sympathy, the third in so intimate and genial a way as to make 
one feel that here the writer is on familiar ground. 

Dekker, then, loved Chaucer ; indeed Chaucer is one of the 
few English poets quoted by him, for into his " Strange Horse 
Race" he brings the Franklin's description of winter in 
modernized dress,*^ and he elsewhere refers to Chaucer's 
Kentish connection,'^ and to the " Canterbury Tales."* And 
he loved Chaucer's son, '' grave Spenser," so rich in the 
affection of his contemporaries. He had already shown his 
admiration for " The Faerie Queene " by borrowing its nomen- 
clature in the drama that celebrates the greatness of Elizabeth, 
and it is possible that from the same source he learned some 
of the sweetness of his poetry. 

The members of the second group are not important, so 
far as we know, in Dekker's history, not even Kyd, for 
although, like other playwrights, he frequently quotes " Jero- 
nimo, go by," and sometimes alludes to the older " Hamlet," his 
genius did not greatly occupy itself with violence, ghosts, or 
bloodshed, and his only revenge tragedy, left unfinished, could 
have had nothing of the Kydian type about it. The rest of the 
group may have been added as a sort of tribute to the memory 
of Nash, who in his writings affectionately mentions all three.^ 

^ A Knight's Conjuring, 74-77. 

« G., HI, 336-337. 

''A Rod for Runaways, G., IV, 302, margin. 

^Northzvard Ho, P., HI, 52. 

® See Rimbault's notes on A Knight's Conjuring, 98—99. 



6 

Very different is the case with the third group, every mem- 
ber of which contributed something to Dekker's style or sub- 
ject matter. Chettle may be an exception, yet with him the 
external relationship was probably the closest of all, for they 
collaborated for some five years; Chettle later wrote a well- 
known verse about his affection for the younger man;^*' and 
the latter once borrowed money to help release his friend from 
imprisonment.^^ This third group possesses a homogeneous- 
ness exhibited by neither of the others. Whether Dekker 
knew the men in the flesh or not, he had seen their plays and 
read their prose, and had found much that was congenial. 
Looking at the group from this point of view, one misses the 
name of Lyly ; but to the bohemians Lyly had never belonged, 
either in his tastes or in the circumstances of his life; and 
besides, it may well be that at the time of writing Dekker had 
not heard of his death, which took place after years of com- 
parative obscurity, in November, 1606. Dekker seldom men- 
tions or alludes to any of his works : " Mother Bombie " once 
or twice,^2 " Love's Metamorphosis " in "_Patiait Grissill " ;^* 
and "Arcadian and Euphuized gentlewomen" in "The Gull's 
Hornbook."^* This is the more strange because Lyly's influ- 
ence upon his first known play is so powerful as to result in 
imitation, and it helped to fix permanently the characterization 
and the style of some of his most delightful comedy. Possibly, 
though this seems doubtful, that influence was already so 
pervasive when Dekker began to write that he did not recognize 
its origin. It is not necessary, however, to account for Lyly's 
absence from those happy spirits, for Dekker was not con- 
sciously drawing up a list of " the authors that have influenced 
me. 

Although Dekker's creed was too stern to allow his unre- 
servedly admitting to those Elysian fields any class except 
babes who had lived too briefly to learn sin of their parents, it 
did not keep him from giving to Marlowe, Greene, Peele, and 

" See below, p. 84. 

" See below, p. 79. 

" The Witch of Edmonton, P., IV, 404, 

«G., V, 127. 

" G., II, 254. 



Nash, very comfortable places there. Of the group of four, 
Marlowe, as might be expected, was by far the most important 
to Dekker; and though " Tamburlaine " is mentioned in his 
works more often perhaps than any other play and some of its 
details are copied in his dramas, yet " Doctor Faustus " more 
deeply impressed itself upon his religious nature. A very 
wonderful day it must have been when the younger poet heard 
for the first time the inspired apostrophe to Helena and listened 
to the heart-wringing despair of a soul lost while " Christ's 
blood streamed in the firmament." All his life Dekker was 
greatly concerned with the struggle between good and evil. In 
" The Honest Whore," it is the right and wrong impulses in 
the human heart, humanly swayed by other personalities; but 
in " Old Fortunatus " it takes the Marlowe form ; so also in 
"The Virgin Martyr," and, to some extent, in "H It be not 
Good."^^ Of course Dekker, like every other dramatist after 
Marlowe, felt the liberating power of his verse, but though he 
was moved to emulate it at times, his happiest work came to be 
distinguished by a simplicity and clarity very unlike Marlowe's 
sonorous periods. 

Very different it was, too, from Peele's " luxury and allure- 
ment of words," yet who but Peele remotely suggested the 
melody of such a passage as this? 

" There can I shew thee 
The ball of gold that set all Troy on fire ; 
There shalt thou see the scarf of Cupid's mother 
Snatcht from the soft moist ivory of her arm, 
To wrap about Adonis' wounded thigh ; 
There shalt thou see a wheel of Titan's car 
Which dropt from heaven when Phaeton fired the world : 
I'll give thee (if thou wilt) two silver doves 
Composed by magic to divide the air, 
Who, as they fly, shall clap their silver wingsi, 
And give strange music to the elements ; 
I'll give thee else the fan of Proserpine, 
Which in reward for a sweet Thracian song 
The black-brow'd Empress threw to Orpheus, 
Being come to fetch Eurydice from hell."^' 

" See discussion of the plays in question. 
"0/d Fortunatus, P., I, no. 



8 

Possibly Dekker felt the witchery of Peele's "Old Wives' 
Tale," both the genial homeliness of the opening scene and 
some of the details. If Peele used the echo dialogue in his 
folk-lore play, so does Dekker in his own folk-lore plays, " Old 
Fortunatus" and "If It be not Good;" and to Peele's Golden 
Head from whose beard gold may be combed corresponds 
Dekker's Golden Head in " If It be not Good," that sheds from 
its " brows and hair " a golden shower, although one is of fairy 
origin and the other of infernal. Greene too used magic, but 
perhaps Dekker was more interested in his gentle and faithful 
women, so true to life in many ways as to constitute a novelty 
on the English stage of that early time ; for between Margaret, 
the keeper's lass of Fressingfield, engaged with her cream- 
bowls and occupied in " running cheeses," and Jane waiting 
upon customers in her shop, the stage offers no heroine whose 
humble occupation is so much a part of her attractiveness. 

Whether the prose of Greene^'^ or Nash more strongly in- 
fluenced Dekker's pamphlets, it would be hard to say. " News 
from Hell " was written in imitation of Nash, and it was from 
Nash that he derived the fantastic style in which too many of 
the prefaces and dedications were composed, although no man 
then living could at will put his ideas into clearer, more direct, 
and more idiomatic prose ; this gift appears in " The Bachelor's 
Banquet " and " The Wonderful Year," written some time be- 
fore " News from Hell." But Dekker had a special admiration 
for Nash, both as man and as writer. In " A Knight's Conjur- 
ing," he describes him as " a mad Greek that had drunk of the 
holy water and was full of the divine fury."^^ In " News from 
Hell," he affirms that the book was written " even out of my 
love to Pierce Pennyless because he hath been always a com- 
panion to scholars ; "^® and a little farther on is found the well- 
known tribute : 

" And thou into whose soul, if ever there were a Pythagorean metempsy- 
chosis, the raptures of that fiery and inconfinable Italian spirit were boun- 

" Greene'si lost Exhortation of London unto her Children suggests an 
interesting comparison with Dekker's London pamphlets. 

"^ 13- 

" G., II, 94-95. 



teously and boundlessly infused, thou sometimes Secretary to Pierce Penni- 
less and Master of his requests, ingenious, ingenuous, fluent, facetious, T, 
Nash : from whose abundant pen honey flowed to thy friends and mortal 
aconite to thy enemies : thou that madest the Doctor a flat Dunce, and 
beat'st him at his two tall sundry weapons, poetry and oratory : sharpest satire, 
luculent poet, elegant orator, get leave for thy ghost to come from her 
abiding and to dwell with me a while, till she hath caroused to me in her 
own wonted full measures of wit that my plump brains may swell and burst 
into bitter invectives against the Lieutenant of Limbo if he cashier Pierce 
Penniless with dead pay.""" 

Dekker further showed his interest in " T. Nash" by con- 
tinuing in '' The Gull's Hornbook " and in " Satiromastix " the 
controversy as to the relative merits of long and short hair 
waged between Nash and Richard Harvey,-^ and by versifying 
in his " Canaan's Calamity " a subject that Nash had written 
upon.^^ Perhaps, too, his stinging description of Samuel Row- 
lands as likely to be " taken for a Beadle of Bridewell "^^ arose 
from his knowledge of a literary theft practised by Rowlands 
upon Nash. Middleton, who also loved Nash, refers distinctly 
to something of the sort in " Father Hubbard's Tale."-* 

It has seemed desirable to dwell upon these enthusiasms of 
Dekker's youth. How happy we might be if Shakespere had 
left behind anything so intimate and self-revealing! There 
were other influences — Shakespere included — but they were 
among the living in 1607. There were also fashions in prose 
and poetry prevailing in Dekker's youth that he never showed 
any inclination to follow : the euphuistic novel, the sonnet 
sequence of feigned love, the long and dreary poem of passion, 
and the " snarling satire." 

The poets of the third group, except Chettle, were produc- 
ing their best work between 1587 and 1593, and Marlowe's 

^ G., II, 102-103. 

"See R. A. Small, Stage-Quarrel, 124. 

"^ See below, p. 52. 

"^ See below, pp. 135-136. 

^ See Bullen's Middleton, VIII, 62-63, for the text and for Bullen's note 
which incorporates Malone's suggestion as to " that humorous theft." 

When Dekker speaks of Nash's " keeping company with pickle herrings," 
he surely is not referring to the banquet that killed Greene, as Dyce queries 
and Rimbault affirms, but to the brilliant pamphlet entitled Lenten Stuffs, in 
which Nash pays such eloquent tribute to the red herring of Yarmouth. 



10 

complete output falls between those narrow limits. Dekker, 
as a Londoner, early experienced the delights of contemporary- 
drama. In that little city of some 125,000 inhabitants, genius 
must have elbowed genius. He may have seen "grave 
Spenser," and whether or not he was acquainted with the other 
poets and playwrights, it could not have been difficult for him 
to get glimpses of them at the theatres, or at the ordinary or 
the tavern to which they resorted, or at the stationers' stalls 
where the new books might be seen and handled. It seems cer- 
tain that he knew Nash, who was, it might be added, nearest 
his own age, and who, in 1597, was working upon his share in 
" The Isle of Dogs " for the manager for whom Dekker was 
writing by January of the following year and very likely 
earlier. Judging only from Dekker's own utterances in prose 
and verse, we shall hardly go wrong, then, if we think of him, 
at about 1593 or 1594, as that happiest of mortals, a poet, 
young and conscious of his powers, curious and reverent of 
genius in others, proud of his country and the tongue it spoke, 

" Whose language now dare more than any can,"^ 

idealistic in his scorn for wealth and his ardor for wisdom and 
poetry, and endowed with a gay humor that must have served, 
later at least, as a sort of screen between a gentle nature and 
the sharp points of mere existence. And he had the peculiar 
happiness of living in a world that, in spite of much brutality 
and coarseness, was all hunger and thirst after the fulness of 
life, all passion for beauty and poetical expression. 

^ See below, p. 84, for the whole ode. 



CHAPTER II 

Early Life 

According to his own testimony, Thomas Dekker was born 
and brought up in London. " O thou beautifullest daughter of 
two united monarchies," he cried in 1606, " from thy womb 
received I my being, from thy breasts my nourishment " ;^ and, 
nineteen years later, "O London! thou mother of my life, 
nurse of my being, a hard-hearted son might I be counted if 
here I should not dissolve all into tears, to hear thee pouring 
forth thy passionate condolements."^ But this ardent son of 
London hardly needed to proclaim his loyalty in such specific 
terms : six^ of his prose works are directly concerned with the 
great city, — its sufferings, its vices, it glories, its manners, and 
its monuments ; and about half of his extant plays make Lon- 
don the real scene of action, with details of shops and appren- 
tices, streets and public buildings — the sort of loyalty, the sort 
of local color that one acquires most easily in youth. Curi- 
ously, too, his most extended passage in praise of the country* 
was written to heighten the contrast when he discovered that 
sin might flourish more easily outside the city than within. 
One^ of the pamphlets is little more than a fervent dialogue 
of reciprocal praise and blame between London and West- 
minster, in which the latter often affectionately apostrophises 
her elder : " O my dearest playfellow " f " O thou darling of 
Great Britain, thy princes call thee their treasurer, and thou 

^Induction, The Seven Deadly Sins, G., II, 13. 

'A Rod for Runaways, G., IV, 285. 

' The Wonderful Year, The Seven Deadly Sins of London, Jests to Make 
You Merry — the greater part, The Dead Term, The Gull's Hornbook, A 
Rod for Runaways. 

* See the opening pages of The Bellman of London, G., III. 

■* The Dead Term, G., IV. 

'Idem, 21. 

11 



12 

art so " ;^ " Thou provident mistress over so many families " ;* 
"O thou the best and only huswife of this island";^ "O 
thou charitable reliever and receiver of distressed strangers."^*' 
The date of Dekker's birth is not as certain as the place, but 
the available evidence points to 1572. He was "old" in 1628: 

" For my heart danceth sprightly when I see 
(Old as I am) our English gallantry."" 

In 163 1 he wrote, " I have been a priest in Apollo's temple 
many years ; my voice is decaying with my age."^- He is more 
specific in the dedication prefixed to " English Villanies : " 
"This is no sermon but an epistle-dedicatory, which dedicates 
those discoveries and my three-score years devotedly yours in 
my best service." Now " English Villanies " was the new title 
given in 1632 to the seventh edition of a popular rogue-book 
first published as "Lanthorn and Candlelight";^^ in 1638 
another edition was brought out under the title of 1632. The 
1632 edition is very rare ; not even Fleay had seen a copy of it, 
and the quotation is extracted from the 1638 edition; but he is 
doubtless right in assuming that the dedication was added^^" 
when the title was changed — in 1632. In any case 1638 is 
plainly out of the question, for that would make Dekker about 
twenty years old when in 1598 he was ranked by Meres as 
among those most excellent in tragedy. Dekker's habit, some- 
times unpoetically exercised,^* of giving the exact figures in 
specific cases makes it practically certain to me that the " three- 
score " is here to be taken on its face value. A slight piece of 
contemporary evidence hitherto unnoticed in this connection 
makes it clear that he was born later than 1570, but probably 

' The Dead Term, G., IV, 14. 
^ Idem, 28. 
^ Idem, 32. 
^"Idem, 36. 

" From the lost tract entitled Wars, Wars, Wars. 
^^ Dedication, Match Me in London, P., ,IV, 133. 

^ First printed in 1608, reprinted (twice) in 1609, in 1612, 1616, 1620, 
1632, 1638. 

^^* The 1620 edition has no personal dedication. 

" See, for example, The Whore of Babylon, P., II, 257. 



13 

not much later. In 1610 Samuel Rowlands, in "Martin 
Mark-all," an angry attack upon Dekker,^^ accused him of em- 
ploying, in " Lanthorn and Candlelight," " old words used forty 
years ago, before he was born."^" While the phrase " forty 
years " may conceivably be a round number, it is far more 
likely that it was applied to one somewhat younger than forty 
than to one known to be of just that age, for it is Dekker's 
comparative youth that is contemptuously referred to. There 
is nothing in the known facts of his life that makes 1572 an 
unlikely date. 

Nothing is known of Dekker's parents. A Thomas Dekker 
was buried in St. Saviour's, South wark, in 1594, and his widow 
was living in Maid Lane, Southwark, in 1596. Although the 
name was too common^^ for its occurrence to establish a rela- 
tionship, the spelling is in favor of the poet for he was very 
particular to spell his name in just one way, whether as a 
signature to the few notes, receipts, and letters, that have come 
down to us, or on the title-pages of the pageants that he pre- 
pared for the press ; and with this spelling agrees, for the most 
part, the name attached to his prose work and to his uncol- 
laborated plays. However hazardous it may be to offer a guess 
as to the family of a genius, this at least may be said : Dekker's 
early tastes seem to have been refined and his writings appear 
to indicate that he was brought up among books ; in his personal 
utterances, he speaks of himself with dignified reserve — too 
great indeed for the purposes of biography, a letter to Alleyn 
from prison, for example, complaining of nothing but the 
" barbarousness " of his associates ;^* after his death he was 
bracketed with Ford as a gentleman^® by actors of the company 
which had presented one of his plays. 

^ For further discussion of Martin Mark-all, see below, p. 136. 

Collier was mistaken in assuming that Lanthorn and Candlelight was the 
reply ; on the contrary, it furnished the occasion for Rowland's attack ; for, 
in his Martin Mark-all, he takes to himself the humorous description of a 
certain "usurper" found in Dekker's preface to Lanthorn and Candlelight, 
1609. The mistake has been handed on in The Rogues and Vagabonds of 
Shakespeare's Youth, E. E. Text Soc., 1869. 

" Works ed. by the Hunterian Qub, II, 36. 

" Chr., followed by Ward and Bullen. 

" See below, p. 166, for the letter in question. 

" On the title-page of The Sun's Darling. 



14 

Although it is not known how or where he was educated, he 
seems to have had learning and reading enough to enable him 
to use rightly if somewhat loosely the name of scholar, which 
he cherished only less than that of poet. Grosart, whose edi- 
torial labors have brought him much into Dekker's society, 
sees "traces of scholarly culture in his most hasty produc- 
tions."2o Over against his name, on the title-page of a copy 
of "Troja Nova Triumphans" in the British Museum, is 
written in a contemporary hand, " marchant-tailor," but 
Grosart's investigations have found no shred of evidence con- 
necting him with that famous school.^^ Nor, though he some- 
times speaks of the universities and has a prayer for " the two 
universities" in "The Four Birds of Noah's Ark,"22 and an 
allusion to Cambridge now and then,^^ is there any probability 
that he was ever in attendance upon either. But as in his 
writings he uses Latin and classical mythology easily and 
abundantly and as he undertook the translation of Dedekind's 
Latin poem " Grobianus,"^* he would seem to have had at least 
a grammar-school education or its equivalent, for Latin then 
constitued the bulk of such discipline. He was fond of pre- 
fixing Latin mottoes to his plays,^^ pageants,^® and prose ;^^ 
some of his pamphlets close in the same way,^® and there is 
considerable Latin in their body^^ and on their margins.^^ In 
" The Whore of Babylon " his disputants use scholastic Latin f^ 
in the same play Elizabeth quotes Virgil;^" in another, a 
mourning lover reads Seneca in his study.^^ The " short and 

'"Memorial-Introduction, G., V, p. xiii. 

^ Mem.-Intro., G., V, pp. x-xi. 

^G., V, 54. 

^ The Dead Term, G., IV, 82 ; Sir Thomas Wyatt, P., Ill, 96-97. 

^ See below, p. 142. 

" See title-pages of The Whore of Babylon, Satiromastix, If It be not 
Good, Match Me in London, The Wonder of a Kingdom. 

^ See title-pages of The Magnificent Entertainment, Britannia' s Honor, 
London's Tempe. 

^ See title-pages of The Wonderful Year, The Seven Deadly Sins of 
London, News from Hell, A Strange Horse-race, etc. 

^As above. 

»P., II, 240-1. 

^ Idem, 220. 

'^ I Honest Whore, P., II, 57. 



15 

pithy sentences"^- appended to "The Four Birds of Noah's 
Ark " are mostly drawn from the Church Fathers, and some of 
the same authorities are used later in the prose parts of his 
" Dream."^^ If one may judge from the authors^* quoted, 
named, and alluded to, and from the free use of classical 
mythology, the range of Dekker's reading in Latin was wide; 
in Jonson's eyes, it was, of course, inaccurate and unscholarly. 

There are some indications that Dekker had " less Greek " : 
in " The Gull's Hornbook," for example, he uses Greek char- 
acters for a single word f*^ he quotes what Aristophanes said 
" in his Frog " f^ in two plays he gives Greek names to some 
of his characters ;^^ and he occasionally speaks of "Homer, 
Hesiod, Euripides, and some other mad Greeks "^" as if he 
were acquainted with them in their own speech. 

As he translated the fifteenth-century French satire "Les 
Quinze Joyes de Mariage,"^^ it may be assumed that he read 
French. Although in his plays his pretended French doctors 
speak the jargon generally employed on the stage to arouse 
laughter, he uses French phrases now and then, and in a 
pageant called " Britannia's Honor," there is a little speech of 
very easy French addressed to Henrietta Maria.^^ His writ- 
ings show little evidence of an acquaintance with Italian or 
Spanish, but he uses a few phrases from each language now 
and then,*'' and employs appropriate names in the plays that 

"G., V, 103-108. 
■^G., Ill, 25-54. 

^ Without attempting to give a complete list, for this paragraph on 
Dekker's Latin is superficial, one may say that the names of Horace, 
Virgil, Ovid, and Martial probably occur most frequently. In A Strange 
Horse-race are quoted, with marginal mention of their names, Pliny, 
Suetonius, Tacitus, Virgil, Plutarch, Paracelsus, Aesop, Ovid, Horace. G., 
Ill, 317-320 and 348-362. 

^*»G., II, 227. 

^ To the Reader, The Wonderftd Year, G., I, 79. 

^' The Whore of Babylon, Satironiastix. 

" To the Reader, The Wonderful Year, G., I, 81. 

^ See below, p. 124. 

«» P., IV, loi. 

*" As in Northward Ho, P., Ill, 60-61 ; and in Old Fortunatus, P., I, 136. 



16 

have their scene in either Italy or Spain.*^ But for dramatic 
purposes, his favorite modern language was Dutch. In " The 
Shoemaker's HoHday," " the Dutch talk," writes Ward,*^ " jg 
very racy and at least as full of idiom as that of Dirk Hat- 
teraick in Scott's masterpiece." There is considerable Dutch 
in Dekker's share in " The Weakest Goeth to the Wall," also, 
and somewhat less in " Northward Ho."*^ Next to Dutch, in 
his plays at least, Dekker liked Welsh.** His is the most 
idiomatic as well as the most entertaining Welsh-English on 
the Elizabethan stage ; in " Patient Grissill " Keltic words are 
mixed with the broken English.*^ 

It would be idle to try to estimate the extent of Dekker's 
reading, the more so as he is in the habit of alluding to books 
and their characters indirectly, humorously, even punningly. 
When he describes one of the seven deadly sins of London as 
"the Gaveston of the time,"**^ I suspect that he is thinking of 
Marlowe's " Edward the Second," although that may not be 
the case. When he writes of an old prisoner : " In his face 
were the Ruins of youth, in his garments of Time; in both the 
Triumphs of poverty,"*'^ it is very possible that his phrase was 
conditioned by the memory of a poem by Spenser, but one 
cannot be sure. Among the writers, not elsewhere noted, that 
he actually mentions by name, however, are Stow,*^ with his 
" chronicle of decimo sexto," " huge Holinshed,"*^ Machia- 
velli,^" and Sir John Harington, to whom he dedicated " The 

*^ The Honest Whore, The Wonder of a Kingdom, Match Me in London, 
and // It be not Good. 

*^ A History of English Dramatic Literature, II, 457. 

^ There is Dutch talk in The Roaring Girl and an identifying Dutch phrase 
in Sir Thomas Wyatt ; and a little Dutch speech by Hans the waiter in 
Westward Ho. 

** There is a Welsh pair in Patient Grissill, a Welshman in Satiromastix, 
and another in Northward Ho. 

*^ For a comparison of Dekker's dialect with Shakespere's, see W. Bang's 
Dekker-Studien, Englische Studien, band 28, 226-7. 

*^ The Seven Deadly Sins of London, G., II, 58. 

^ The Misery of a Prison and a Prisoner, G., II, 338. 

*« The Gull's Hornbook, G., II, 236 ; The Wonderful Year, G., I, 96. 

*" The Wonderful Year, G., I, 96. 

°" Work for Armorers, G., IV, 131. 



17 

Dead Term."^^ He seems to have been familiar with " Piers 
Plowman,"^^ " Sir John Mandeville's Travels,"^^ and Jourdan's 
account of the Bermudas.^* He liked folk and fairy lore, for 
they form the groundwork of two of his plays and doubtless 
also of the lost " Fairy Knight."^^ He tells us that he greatly 
enjoyed history: "O histories! you sovereign balms to the 
bodies of the dead, that preserve them more fresh than if they 
were alive, keep the fames of princes from perishing when 
marble monuments cannot save their bones from being rotten, 
you faithful intelligencers between kingdoms and kingdoms, 
you truest councillors to kings, even in their greatest 
dangers."^^ But the book that Dekker knew best and quoted 
most frequently was the Bible. A eulogy of it opens " The 
Seven Deadly Sins of London."*^ In his " Dream "°^ he gives 
chapter and verse and the whole poem is full of biblical phras- 
ing. From the same source is derived much of the simplicity 
and the rhythm, soft or fervent, of his book of prayers,"® and, 
more subtly, of his language elsewhere. He sometimes uses its 
phraseology, too, for half humorous purposes, as in the follow- 
ing description of Confusion : " In one hand she gripped a heap 
of storms with which at her pleasure she could trouble the 
waters."^" In connection with his indebtedness to the Bible it 
is interesting to remember that he had a hand in two biblical 
vydramas^^ when that species was dying out. 

In this superficial survey, little account has been taken of his 
delving into curious lore or of his innumerable allusions to 

" G., IV, 7-8. 

^The Gull's Hornbook, G., II, 211. 

^Patient Grissill, G., V, 213, but Sir John Mandeville was the title of a 
play recorded by Henslowe in 1591. 

"// It be not Good, P., Ill, 340; A Strange Horse-race, G., Ill, 370. 
°' See below, p. 178. 
" Work for Armorers, G., TV, loi. 
" G., II, 7. 
« G., Ill, 1-60. 

^ The Four Birds of Noah's Ark, G., V, i-ioi. 
*^ Lanthorn and Candlelight, G., Ill, 189. 

^Jephthah with Munday, and a prologue and epilogue for Pontius Pilate. 
3 



18 

contemporary plays,^^ ballads,®- stories, and pamphlets. Of 
contemporary playwrights he naturally enjoyed Shakespere 
most, especially " A Midsummer Night's Dream," " Romeo and 
Juliet," and " Hamlet."®^ He shows his admiration sometimes 
by imitation or quotation, but perhaps more often by adapta- 
tion, as when, to illustrate on a small scale, he modifies a well- 
known line, spoken by Puck, to describe " God's arm, like a 
girdle going round about the world."®* When one considers 
Dekker's general reading, what one misses, on the whole, is a 
knowledge of Italian literature, and, in his plays, a dependence 
upon Italian motive, although it is necessary to remember that 
his taste seems to have shrunk from the sort of Italian 
motives most popular. 

Books, to him, were certainly a source of solid pleasure: 
"Art thou sad? where is sweeter music than in reading? Art 
thou poor? open those closets, and invaluable treasures are 
poured into thy hands."®^ How Dekker obtained his reading, 
we do not know. He may have had access to private libraries ; 
such " a companion to scholars " as Nash may have helped him 
out; he probably had the bookstall habit; it may be that he 
showed what has been called his " hopeless improvidence " by 
buying some of his books. From this subject I cannot wholly 
dissociate his pity for poor scholars, long noted by the 
critics; for while it may possibly have derived its poignancy 
from his own experience, it was early exhibited and seems to 
me, judging from what I surmise as to his methods of writing, 
more likely to have come from the trials of some one to whom 
he was attached. In his " Misery of a Prison and a Prisoner," 
there is a portrait,®® strongly individualized and drawn with 
great feeling, of an old man to whose gentle nature loss of 

** There are over thirty allusions to plays and ballads in Satiromasttx 
alone. 

** See discussion of The Whore of Babylon, Honest Whore, and Match 
Me in London. For the whole subject, see E. Koeppel's Studien ilber 
Shakespeare's Wirkung in Materialien, 1905. Some few of the parallelisms 
seem to me slight. Fleay also has notes on this subject in his article on 
Dekker. 

"A Rod for Runaways, G., IV, 305. 

'"'Work for Armorers, G., IV, 101—2. 

«» G., II, 337-343. 



19 

freedom was most irksome; he had been a scholar and in his 
happier moments " could read comfort to himself out of his 
own library, which was his memory." Another passage testi- 
fying to Dekker's sympathy with the poor scholar was written 
earlier, and though out of place in the mouth of the speaker, 
forms one of the vivid spots in a lifeless play. 

" The dragons that keep learning's golden tree. 
As you now have, I fought with, conquered them, 
Got to the highest bough, eat of the fruit, 
And gathered of the sevenfold leaves of art 
What I desired ; and yet for all the moons 
That I have seen wax old and pine for anger 
I had outwatched them, and for all the candles 
I wasted out on long and frozen nights 
To thaw them into day, I filled my head 
With books, but scarce could fill my mouth with bread."" 

There is no evidence that Dekker was brought up to do any- 
thing in particular. He shows a peculiar sympathy for pren- 
tices, indeed, bringing mention of them into his plays in and 
out of season ; one of the most pathetic and specific prayers in 
" The Dove " is that to be said by a prentice " going to his 
labour " f^ but it would be unwise to assume that Dekker 
was ever a prentice himself, for he was born with the artist's 
eye for detail, and prentices cut a considerable figure in all 
street demonstrations. Besides, this kind of argument proves 
too much. We are no sooner convinced that he knew all about 
the linen-draper's trade, for example, than we discover that 
he was more familiar with the shoemaker's; and then we are 
constrained to remember that " The Shoemaker's Holiday " 
was derived directly from a definite story of shoemakers, and 
that shoemakers were a part of the stage spectacle before 
Dekker's time.** Moreover, this sort of thing is entirely 
absent from the prose, except the book of prayers, which is 
necessarily semi-dramatic in character; the point of view is 
always that of the man of letters — poet, scholar, commentator 
on manners, or preacher. Nor was Dekker ever a player ; the 

" The Whore of Babylon, P., II, 223-224. 
® Quoted in part below, p. 145. 
"* As in Locrine. 



20 

passage quoted in the Introduction in which he apologizes for 
bringing an actor into the company of poets shows his usual 
attitude toward players, an attitude not contradicted by the 
affectionate dedication^** of one of his plays to his " loving and 
loved friends," the actors, for it has not the tone of a man who 
has ever been one of them. Again, although Dekker shows 
unusual acquaintance with law,'^^ its phraseology and its 
processes, and in serious and humorous metaphors reverts 
readily to its language,''^ there is no proof that he was ever 
entered at the Inns of Court, and we must needs attribute his 
legal accomplishments to his lively interest in human things 
and to his intimacy with such of his friends as were students 
of law, Middleton and Ford among them, perhaps Marston 
too.''* 

It is very possible, however, that at some time during his 
youth, Dekker had a brief experience in the wars waging in the 
Netherlands, where so many English fought for glory, pay, or 

"// It be not Good, P., Ill, 261. 

^1 Noted by Ward, II, 453. 

" Such phraseology is so scattered through Dekker's writings that it is 
difficult to indicate briefly its abundance. In News from Hell, G., II, it is 
found not only in the account of " sessions," but also in the use of such 
expressions as the favorite "in forma pauperis," p. 91 ; " noverints," p. 93; 
" fieri facias," p. 97. The Gull's Hornbook, G., II, has technical phrases on 
p. 24s, p. 248, p. 262. The Dead Term, G., IV, offers, besides extended 
praise of law, a summary of particular laws, p. 56-58. The Strange Horse- 
race, G., Ill, brings forward a banquet of legal documents, p. 371-373. 
The Raven's Almanac, G., IV, contains a gibe at Littleton, p. 175, and 
Wark for Armorers, G., IV, a proclamation full of legal verbiage, p. 145- 
149. In The Bellman of London, G., Ill, 117, a legal phrase is explained. 
" The Statute of Rogues " in The Wonderful Year, G., I, 79, is not impor- 
tant although used metaphorically, but less to be expected in a playwright's 
mouth is the " Verdimote Inquest " of The Seven Deadly Sins, G., II, 61. 
There is satire on " the punies and young fry of the law " in The Raven's 
Almanac, G., IV, 174-S. In the Prayer for a Lawyer, G., V, 53, occurs the 
significant reminder, " Equity is the ground upon which law is builded." 

Very frequent is the use of sessions or court in a figurative sense. Aside 
from the oft-recurring sessions in hell, we have, for example, Elizabeth 
summoned to the Star-Chamber of heaven. The Wonderful Year, G., I, 86 ; 
a heroine who believes that she is dying feels " the spiritual court " break- 
ing up, Satiromaslix, P., I, 251, and there are many other cases. 

" R. A. Small, Stage-Quarrel, 62. 



21 

religion. This hypothesis would serve to explain, as no other 
does, some of his unusual tastes and unusual knowledge. His 
liking for the terms of war probably means nothing, although 
such metaphors are astonishingly frequent;'* but brief pictures 
of military life like the Tilbury scenes in the " Whore of Baby- 
lon "'^^ and the account of the emotions and talk of soldiers 
after a great battle,'^® are well executed; and the lame or 
wounded soldier has been noticed by every reader of his plays 
and is found as frequently in the prose. Perhaps, too, his 
many references to war in the Low Countries, to Low Country 
captains and the like, may mean little, for they are found to 
some extent in other writers, and, as Dekker puts it in 1609: 
" The Low Countries . . . have, in renown, gone beyond king- 
doms of higher fame, only for thus repairing and keeping open 
those old and ruinated temples of Bellona."''^ Not significant 
either may be his use of the Low Countries as a synonym for 
hell,'^^ for Nash, his master, used it first, and Dekker, on his 
own account, could never resist an invitation to pun. But 
there is also a considerable body of allusions and references full 
of specific and concrete detail. He speaks contemptuously of 
a certain class of rogues who " carry the shapes of soldiers 
and can talk of the Low Countries though they never were 

'* Work for Armorers, G., IV, is an extended allegory of social condi- 
tions couched in terms of war, with a preface addressed to soldiers. There 
is a call to arms in the preface of Lanthom and Candlelight, G., III. Going 
to law is going to war. The Dead Term, IV, 26-27 ; and a prison is a camp, 
Tests to Make You Merry, G., II, 354-355. The titles of two lost works 
are : The Artillery Garden, and Wars, Wars, Wars. 

Brief war metaphors are so frequent in the prose as to constitute a 
mannerism : the pen is " a most dangerous piece of artillery," Epis.-Ded., 
Work for Armorers, G., IV, 89-90 ; " the powder of their wit being wet and 
not so apt to take fire," The Dead Term, G., IV, 82 ; etc. 

'" P., II, 270, 273-4. 

"""The Wonderful Year, G., I, 118. 

" Work for Armorers, G., IV, 92. 

" " The seven electors of the Low Infernal Countries," The Seven Deadly 
Sins, G., II, 78 ; " those Low Country commodities of hell," The Bellman of 
London, G., Ill, 116; Charon's boat is "the Flemish hoy of hell," News 
from Hell, G., II, 119. These are specimens; there are many more, to 
weariness, especially in the books dealing with hell: News from Hell; the 
opening chapters of Lanthom and Candlelight ; A Strange Horse-race. 



22 

beyond Dover."'^ The seventeen "valleys of Belgia" are 
"those seventeen Dutch virgins"^" or the seventeen daughters 
"young and fair" of the Netherlannders.^^ Low Country 
soldiers were compelled to feed "upon cabbage, upon roots, 
and, upon Christmas day, instead of minched pies, had no 
better cheer than provant (mouldy Holland cheese and coarse 
brown bread). "^ Dekker speaks of fellows "that looked like 
Flemings, for they were as fat as butter ; "^^ of " huge Dutch 
aldermen's sleeves";^* and remarks of one of his characters, 
"they harnessed the Grand Signior's coach, mounted his 
cavalry upon curtals, and so sent him most pompously, like a 
new-elected Dutch burgomaster, into the city."®^ Again: 
" Their hall that now is larger than some dorps among the 
Netherlands was then no bigger than a Dutch butcher's 
shop " f^ and again, " A drollery or Dutch piece of lantskop 
may sometimes breed in the beholder's eye as much delecta- 
tion as the best and most curious masterpiece excellent in that 
art."" Drake 

" Swears, Fleming-like, by twenty thousand devils."** 

To this list of quotations, by no means exhaustive,^* may be 

^° The Bellman of London, G., Ill, 93. 

^Induction to The Seven Deadly Sins, G., II, 9. 

*^ The Whore of Babylon, P., II, 219. 

^^Work for Armorers, G., IV, 117. 

^A Strange Horse-race, G., Ill, 341. Also "the four trumpeters of the 
world . . . like four dropsy Dutch captains standing sentinels in their 
quarters," News from Hell, G., II, 97. 

*^ Work for Armorers, G., IV, 162. 

^ The Seven Deadly Sins, G., II, 33. 

^"The Gull's Hornbook, G., II, 210. 

" Epis.-Ded. prefixed to The Seven Deadly Sins, Cambridge Edition, not 
given by Grosart. For a similar passage, see The Bellman of London, G., 
Ill, 87. 

*^ The Whore of Babylon, P., II, 262. See also the advice given to the 
gallant out late at night, to curse and swear " like one that speaks high 
Dutch." The Gull's Hornbook, G., II, 261. 

^* The following might be added as being somewhat different : " The esti- 
mation of them [books] riseth and falleth faster than the exchange of 
money in the Low Countries." To the Reader, Jests to Make You Merry, 
G., II, 271 ; " You will by and by suppose yourself in the Low Countries, 



23 

added a reminder that Dekker had a knowledge of the Dutch 
language, which, except for a few cant phrases, seems to have 
been an unusual attainment among playwrights. It has even 
been deemed probable that it was through Dutch that he had 
access to the German folk story of " Old Fortunatus and his 
Sons."«o 

In general, although Dekker had lived through the period 
of the Spanish Armada and the taking of Cadiz, whenever he 
thought of war he thought of the Netherlands, and mention of 
the Dutch sprang to his lips more frequently than mention of 
any other nationality. Traces of unusual cosmopolitanism in 
his writings^^ would almost seem to demand as a pre-requisite 
some residence in a foreign land. He does not claim all 
virtues exclusively for England. He may indeed share in the 
stale satire of things '' Italianate "^^ although in such a way as 
to reflect upon the imitators rather than upon Italy ; but ije 
also ridicules ascribing treachery and violence to Italy,^^ and in 
" Patient Grissill " that " sweetest country in the world " is de- 
fended from the attacks of her traducers.®* 1 In his prayer to 

for as the soldiers there, so these here, talk of nothing but stratagems and 
points of war." The Dead Term, G., IV, 26 ; the two following are prob- 
ably commonplaces : " She slips from one company to another like a fat 
eel between a Dutchman's fingers." The Roaring Girl, P., Ill, 156, and 
" Alas ! there you find worse enemies than those of Breda had in Spinola's 
camp. A Spaniard is not so hateful to a Dutchman as a Londoner to a 
countryman." A Rod for Runaways, G., IV, 292. 

In The Royal Entertainment, Dekker describes both the Italian and the 
Belgian pageants, the latter with far more sympathy. See P., I, 283-295, 
especially pp. 292-3. 

The mention of " Tannekin the Froe " in Patient Grissill, G., V, 175, has 
no particular significance except to show how easily such words ran from 
Dekker's tongue. 

** For a discussion of this question, see below, pp. 33-34. 

** Mr. Rhys thinks that the name — whether Dekker or Decker — suggests 
Dutch origin. Introduction to the Mermaid edition of Dekker's plays, p. xi. 

'''Old Fortunatus, P., I, 119. 

" Fantastic compliment stalks up and down. 
Tricked in outlandish feathers ; all his words, 
His looks, his oaths, are all ridiculous. 
All apish, childish, and Italianate." 

^^ Gull's Hornbook, G., II, 215. 
»*G., V, 168. 1^ 



24 

be used in time of civil war, he takes note of the sorrows of 
other nations, — of France, "that doth yet mourn in the ashes 
of those fires, and Germany is even now stifled with the 
smokes i"^** Elsewhere®^ he expresses a passionate pity for 
the same countries; I quote briefly from the apostrophe to 
France : " O gallant monarchy ! what hard fate hadst thou, that 
when none were left to conquer thee, thou shouldst triumph 
over thyself. Thou hast wines flowing in thy veins but thou 
madest thyself drunk with thine own blood." This apprecia- 
tion^^ did not keep Dekker from making his French characters 
act and speak absurdly, and the same discrepancy exists in the 
case of the Irish, for over against his stage Irishmen may be 
set a little passage of praise^^ unusual at that time. 

Whether Dekker spent his youth in study or in fighting or 
in both, he developed no taste for the Court, and his love for 
Queen Elizabeth, often and ardently expressed,®® was never 
soured by disappointed hopes of preferment. Nor did he 
hang about the houses of nobles; when he was compelled to 
seek patronage he did so unwillingly and addressed his epistles- 
dedicatory more often to magistrates^®^ than to any other one 
class. His known friends were poets, players, a water bailiff 

^''G., V, 57. With Dekker, "Germany" often means the Netherlands, as 
in the passage next mentioned. 
^G., II, 9-10. 
" Noted by Jusserand. 

"* " You have a son 

Rebellious, wild, ingrateful, poor, and yet 

Apollo from's own head cuts golden locks 

To have them grow on his : his harp is his. 

The darts he shoots are his : the winged messenger 

That runs on all the errands of the gods 

Teaches him swiftness; he'll outstrip the winds." 

The Whore of Babylon, P., II, 206. 
°° See below, pp. 40-41. 

^°** The Wonderful Year to the " water-bailiff of London " ; The Seven 
Deadly Sins to a clerk of the peace ; Wars, Wars, Wars to the lord mayor 
and the two sheriffs of London and Middlesex ; English Villainies, 1638, 
to the justices of the peace in Middlesex ; The Bellman of London to " all 
those that either by office are sworn to punish, or in their own love to 
virtue, wish to have the disorders of a state amended " ; Canaan's Calamity 
to a " justice of the peace and quorum." 



26 

of London/"* a " gentleman."*"* Impecunious poet though he 
was, he set the highest value upon good citizenship, especially 
upon the necessity of enforcing and obeying the laws of the 
commonwealth. Whether directly or indirectly, consciously or 
unconsciously expressed, his views were those of the growing 
democratic spirit, a spirit nobly crystallized in his well-known 
characterization of Christ : 

" The first true gentleman that ever breathed.""' 

He was modern, too, in his pity for the animals whose torture 
furnished amusement to the multitude,*"^ and in his feeling, as 
keen as that of a modern painter, for the romantic charm of 
city scenes and city streets, as well as for their humorous 
values. 

Since among those who write about Dekker, it has become a 
species of commonplace to assume that he was somehow dis- 
reputable, it should be added that there is no reason for think- 
ing that his youth was a period of sowing wild oats. Like his 
own Andelocia, he was probably "not given" that way, and, 
to me at least, the moral idealism of " Old Fortunatus " counts 
for something. Down to 1604 when he was over thirty years 
old, his plays contain neither characters nor situations that 
could offend the fastidious, and his vocabulary, for the times, 
is comparatively free from grossness. If Captain Tucca is an 
exception, why " that heretical libertine Horace taught me so 
to mouth it."*"* Dekker's worst habits when he comes into 
view in 1598 were, apparently, a steady attendance at the 
theatre and a prodigious industry in producing plays. For one 
habit of good-fellowship indeed he seems to have had an espe- 
cial aversion : he always speaks scoffingly of tobacco ; his gulls 
make an Indian chimney of the nose and are curious in their 
taste for it i*"** his women dislike it ;*"^ death*"^ and the devil**** 

"' See epistles prefixed to The Wonderful Year and Nezvs from Hell. 

"^^ I Honest Whore, P., II, 90. 

"^ See below, p. 141. 

^"^ Epilogus to Satiromastix, P., I, 265. 

"" The Gull's Hornbook, G., II, 224, 265. 

"« Westward Ho, P., II, 344-345. 

"' Old Fortunatus, P., I, 97. 

"* To the Reader, News from Hell, G., II, 89. 



26 

are "tobacconists," the former "a lean tawny- face tobac- 
conist;" in his own person as Demetrius, he refuses con- 
temptuously the " right pudding " offered by Asinius Bubo.^"' 

There remain some few tastes and interests that Dekker 
doubtless acquired in his youth. Although, like Lamb, he pre- 
ferred London to the country, he was far more sensitive to 
natural beauty than most of his contemporaries."" One whole 
play or masque, " The Sun's Darling," is devoted to the chang- 
ing sentiment of the seasons. He had a special liking for 
birds :"^ for the nightingale, for the lark's "silver leer-a- 
leer,""- for the cuckoo, that "like a single sole fiddler that 
reels from tavern to tavern, plied it all the day long.""^ Like 
his friend Webster, he had a sort of fearful joy in the cry of 
the screech owl,^^* and, before Coleridge, he combined the 
owl and the ivy-tod."^ He loved flowers, the daisies, the 
"sad violet"; and he speaks of the cornfields, the lustrous 
leaf of the willow,"^ of " white butterflies.""'^ and " the waters 
of the crisped spring."^^^ Like Day, another friend, he was 
fond of bees,^^^ too; and he must have done a great deal of 
star-gazing, for stars or " battlements of stars "^^^ are often 
found in his most eloquent verse. 

To the charm of some of the fine arts he was susceptible. 
He liked to describe buildings ; and if no such rooms, so deco- 

^"^ Satiromastix, P., I, 196. 

"" For a rather detailed description of nature, see the opening pages of 
The Bellman of London, G., III. 

^" Bird metaphors, not especially effective, are found in The Whore of 
Babylon, P., II, p. 230, 232, 249, and elsewhere. 

^^The bird song in The Sun's Darling, p. 304. 

^^' The Wonderful Year, G., I, 84. 

^^^Idem, p. 85, 104; and in many other passages. 

^^'^ Jests to Make You Merry, G., II, 359, 

^^^ News from Hell, G., II, 153. 

^" The " white butterflies " are Paul's boys. Gull's Hornbook, G., II, 233. 

"'Song in Patient Grissill: "Art thou poor," etc. 

119 « jjjg ]yiuses' birds, the bees, were hived," etc. Satiromastix, P., I, 213. 

See also speech of Genius Loci in Kings Entertainment, idem, 273, but 
there are many others. 

"" See Hipolito's speech, / Honest Whore, P. II, 59. Again, there are 
many others. 



27 

rated, as those of Torrenti^-^ and Sir Alexander Wentgrave"^ 
ever existed, their suggestion of strange beauty is just as great. 
He was fond of pictures and often uses figures from painting 
or drawing when he speaks of his books.^^^ 

Dekker shared the then general love of music to such an 
extent that he could hardly speak of it without breaking into 
a sort of rapture. 

" [I] secretly 
Commanded music with her silver tongue 
To chime soft lullabies into his soul."^^ 

" Go ; let music 
Charm with her excellent voice an awful silence 
Through all this building, that her sphery soul 
May, on the wings of air, in thousand forms 
Invisibly fly, yet be enjoyed.""" 

" Take instruments. 
And let the raptures of choice harmony 
Thorough the hollow windings of his ear 
Carry their sacred sounds."*^' 

Doubtless he sang, he who could, with little excuse or none 
at all, bring out a gay little song for boating, a heartier one for 
a drinking bout, a love song with May and the nightingale in 
it, a tender lullaby, or the sweetest song for the poor ever 
sung. I quote one, not by any means the best, but one that 
is peculiarly Elizabethan in a kind of breathless vitality. 

" My Muse that art so merry, 
When wilt thou say th'art weary? 
Never, I know it, never ! 
This flight thou couldst keep ever : 
Thy shapes which so do vary 
Beyond thy bounds thee carry. 
Now plume thy ruffled wings. 
He's hoarse who always sings. "*^' 

"^ The Wonder of a Kingdom, P., IV, 249. 

^^ The Roaring Girl, P., Ill, 141-142. 

^^ See Epilogus, The Roaring Girl, P., Ill ; and the brief figure in Lectori, 
Whore of Babylon, P., II, 189; and there are many others, especially in 
the prefaces. 

^^ Old Fortunatus, P., I, 139. 

^ Westward Ho, P., II, 333. 

"* Old Fortunatus, P., I, 92. 

^ A Strange Horse-race, G., Ill, 378. 



CHAPTER III 

The Earliest Plays 

The first mention of Dekker's name is in Henslowe's 
"Diary," when, January 8, 1598, he was paid for a book, that 
is, a play. As during that year he had a hand in fifteen or 
sixteen other plays and as he was in September named by 
Meres as among the best in tragedy, he could hardly in January 
have been a novice in the drama. Moreover, as in February, 
1596, a Fortunatus play appears in the "Diary," there is some 
reason for believing that he was then working for Henslowe, 
possibly earlier.^ Unfortunately the "Diary" has almost no 
record for 1593; there are gaps in 1596, 1597, and 1600, and 
the names of the authors are not given until 1598; yet, incom- 
plete as it is, it remains our only authority for the titles of 
Dekker's plays down to 1600 and our chief authority to the end 
of 1602. Of the various anonymous plays found in the 
"Diary" before 1598 and tentatively assigned to Dekker, it is 
necessary to speak here of but two : " Philipo and Hippolito " 
under the date of July 9, 1594, and "Antony and Valia," Jan. 
4, 1595. Plays bearing virtually the same names^ were reg- 
istered to print in 1660 under Massinger's name. The only 
reason for connecting these two plays with Dekker is that 
Massinger is known to have refashioned his " Virgin Martyr." 
It seems a slight reason; Warburton's servant has put the 
question beyond the possibility of a solution.* 

* Greg says pertinently : " We should have to regard it as something of a ] 
coincidence that he should have begun to write just at the very moment '. 
that Henslowe began to record the names of the authors connected with \ 
the company. Henslowe's Diary, II, 257. ' 

* Philenzo and Hippolita, June 29 ; and Antonio and Vallia, June 29, 
Greg has corrected Fleay's error in the date of the former. Diary, II, 165. 

*Fleay's identification of The French Doctor, October 18, 1594, with 
The Jew of Venice, a lost play by Dekker, not registered to print till 1653, 
is nothing but a guess. See Greg, Diary, II, 1 70-1 71, for an intricate note 

28 



29 

When it comes to assigning an existing play by Dekker to an 
earlier year than 1598, the matter is somewhat different; yet 
even then a special difficulty arises from the fact that all of his 
work for that year, with a single exception, has perished, and 
that the exception, " Phaeton," or, as it was later christened, 
" The Sun's Darling," suffered revision from Ford in the only 
version that has come down to us; there is, accordingly, less 
basis for comparison than could be desired. In spite of all 
difficulties, however, there are reasons for believing that two 
extant plays, " Old Fortunatus " and " The Whore of Baby- 
lon," belong, in their original form, to an early date in Dekker's 
dramatic history. In both cases the evidence is chiefly in- 
ternal, consisting mainly in their dependence upon influences 
and stage-conventions that had become archaic at the dates 
usually assigned to these plays and in their weakness in char- 
acterization. The third play discussed in this chapter is gen- 
erally acknowledged to belong to an early date, and the crude- 
ness of what I shall try to show is Dekker's share points to 
inexperience. 

The first mention of an English Fortunatus play is found in 
the entry in Henslowe's " Diary," already referred to, dated 
February 3, 1596: "First Part of Old Fortunatus." Later 
entries in February, in April, and in May speak simply of 
" Fortunatus." Nearly four years later, on November 9, 1599, 
Dekker is named as receiving two pounds for the " whole his- 
tory of Fortunatus," and by November 30 he had received the 
full payment of six pounds. The next day he had another 
pound for "altering" the play, and on December 12, two 
pounds for "the end of Fortunatus for the Court." It was 
acted before the Queen on Christmas Day by the Admiral's 
men and v^^as printed* in 1600, with Dekker's name at the end 
but not on the title-page. It seems to be generally accepted 
that the alterations and the end for the Court comprise, be- 
on The Jew of Venice. He there discusses the German version, entitled 
The Righteous Judgment of a Girl Graduate, or The Jew of Venice. 

Mr. F. W. Moorman's assignment to Dekker of a share in The Birth of 
Merlin (date uncertain) does not seem to me convincing. See Cam. Hist. 
Eng. Lit., V, 280-281, for his argument. 

* The Pleasant Comedie of Old Fortunatus. 



30 

sides the Prologue and the Epilogue at Court, the Virtue and 
Vice scenes,^ including all of the play that follows the original 
conventional close : 

" England shall ne'er be poor if England strive 
Rather by virtue than by wealth to thrive.'" 

Possibly the passage in praise of courts' was also added; the 
phrasing is somewhat similar to that of the courtly compliment 
in the first prologue. 

There would seem to be no reason for denying to Dekker the 
" First Part." He was almost certainly writing for the theatre 
as early as 1596, and the later " Fortunatus " shows no trace 
of any other hand. It is probable also that two parts already 
existed in 1596. The very use of "first" presupposes a 
second.® Nor is it probable that any one, fascinated as the 
author evidently was by the story, should stop at the death of 
the father ; nor that four years later, after long experience in a 
very different kind of work, he could so well have maintained 
the continuity of character and of tone : in the latter half of the 
play as in the first, Andelocia is the very copy of his father in 
boyish love of adventure and thirst for enjoyment and in a 
sort of unmoral way of looking at things ; for in spite of all his 
efforts Dekker could not completely moralize the old story. 
It seems unlikely, too, that as late as 1599 Dekker could have 
conceived the unlovely character of Agripyne, and by that 
time Shadow would have lost some of his Lylian airs and 
graces.® Let us then assume that Dekker had originally writ- 
ten two parts — or two plays^" — from which in 1599 he was 

" For these scenes, see C. H. Herford's Literary Relations of England and 
Germany in the Sixteenth Century, 1886, Cambridge, pp. 211-212, 215-218. 
•P., I, 170. 
^P., I, U8-119. 

* Fleay's assumption that sc. 1-6 constitute the first part and that the 
"whole" play was produced by the addition of sc. 7-12 is hardly tenable 
if for no other reason than that the original play must have been long 
enough to occupy the usual time in acting. 

* The question of pay need not disturb us, for Dekker was then the 
brightest star in Henslowe's firmament, and his task was perhaps as diffi- 
cult as writing a new play. 

'"The first dealing with the history of Fortunatus, the second perhaps 
with his death and certainly with the history of his sons. 



81 

directed by Henslowe, who remembered their early popularity, 
to fashion a whole play. His procedure may have been some- 
thing like this: he retained the most striking features in the 
history of Fortunatus, — the adventure with Fortune, the theft 
of the flying hat, and his sudden death, and the most striking 
feature in the history of Andelocia, — his pursuit of Agripyne, 
and relegated the rest to a chorus that seems modeled on that of 
" Doctor Faustus " and possibly on that of " Henry V." To 
me it is nearly certain that he also omitted a portion of the sen- 
timental experiences of some one, Andelocia or Orleans, for as 
the play now stands, the opening line of the Prologue is mean- 
ingless : 

" Of love's sweet war our timorous Muse doth sing,"" 

since "love's sweet war" is assuredly not the theme of the 
"whole Fortunatus" of 1599. We do not know when this 
Prologue was written, certainly not for the Court, for a sepa- 
rate and appropriate prologue is provided for that purpose. It 
may have been composed for the original second part, or there 
remains the possibility that when the Vice and Virtue episodes 
were added some love scenes were cut out to make room for 
them. 

But, so far as we know, " Fortunatus " was not a new play 
in February, 1596. An earlier date, 1595 or possibly 1594, is 
probably nearer the truth. As Fleay has pointed out, the prose 
parts are full of Lylian reminiscence.^^ It appears in the 
characters. Shadow, the witty, the fantastic, the impertinent, 
the faithful, feeding his hungry master at command upon "a 
dish of paradoxes," and finally disappearing in the allegory, is 
no other than a Lylian page. But before he fades out of the 
play, Dekker humanizes him with his inimitable touch. " I'll 

" P., I, 85. 

" Fleay indeed is so impressed by the character of the first six scenes 
that he would put them back to 1590, a needlessly early date, for the influ- 
ences then at work were still vital in 1594. The phrases "an almond for 
a parrot " and " crack me this nut " were long current. Dekker uses " an 
almond parrot" in Westward Ho, P., II, 356, and Henslowe records a con- 
temporary play called Crack Me This Nut. In his John Lyly, p. 485, note 
I, Feuillerat calls attention to two specific imitations of Lyly in Old 
Fortunatus. 



32 

go hence," cries Shadow, "because you send me: but I'll go 
weeping hence for grief that I must turn villain as many do, 
and leave you when you are up to the ears in adversity."^* In 
Shadow Dekker improved upon his model; not so in the case 
of Agripyne. It is true, as critics have observed, that Dekker 
is limited by the plot necessity of a pride so excessive as to de- 
serve punishment, but Agripyne is not proud in an agreeable 
way ; she is greedy, not to say stingy, and we are made to feel 
neither her beauty nor that which most enchanted Orleans, 
" the rich brightness of her mind." Dekker's failure to give 
her one single trait of a heroine lies, it seems to me, in the fact 
that he is trying to depict, after Lyly, a nimble-witted court 
lady, who talks in a clever shallow way about lovers and 
questions of love ;^* but he lacks the peculiar superficial dainti- 
ness of his model and he had not yet learned to substitute 
the saving note of humanity that belongs to his later 
women. In most of the prose dialogue Lyly's influence is just 
as obvious, not merely in the mention of popinjays, squirrels, 
apes, owls, wagtails, or in the abuse of the word " sweet," or 
in the frequent talk about destiny, but in the quality of solilo- 
quy and repartee. There are many comparisons, antitheses, 
and rhetorical questions, very frequent and effective use of 
parallel phrasing, much punning, though this was Dekker's by 
direct inspiration, and there is some alliteration, as in Shadow's 
" Then defiance to Fortune and a fig for f amine."^^ There is 
Lylian satire on logic, on traveling abroad, and on courtly lan- 
guage.^^ The satire on logic is the most easily recognizable as 
belonging to Lyly's school, but of course the total effect is that 
which convinces or fails to convince. 

If Lyly most influenced the prose style and the characters of 
" Old Fortunatus," the situation and the point of view owe 
most to Marlowe, and specificially to " Doctor Faustus." Her- 
ford points out the parallelism in outline and detail, and in par- 
ticular the circumstance that Fortunatus's choice of riches in- 

^'P., I, 142. 

"With P., I, 129-133, compare Sapho and Phao, I, 4; Midas, III, 3; 
there is considerable of the same sort of thing in Love's Metamorphosis. 
«P., I, 103. 
*® P., I, 114-116, 126, 139-140. 



33 

stead of wisdom assumes the fatality of the compact with the 
Devil made by Doctor Faustus.^'' There are many "Tam- 
burlaine " echoes also : in situation, as when Fortune " treads " 
on the kings in order to mount her " chair " ; and in the lan- 
guage of both Fortune and the Kings. Bajazet in fact is taken 
directly over from Marlowe's play.^* 

This frank imitation of Lyly and Marlowe, in both matter 
and form, unparalleled by anything in Dekker's later drama, 
is a mark of immaturity; so, too, is the preponderance of the 
lyrical that makes the piece almost as much a poem as a play. 
There are some other archaic elements, such as the echo dia- 
logue and possibly the successive " Triumphs " of Fortune, 
Vice, and Virtue." It seems to me, then, careless criticism 
that would assign " Old Fortunatus " to a date following that 
of " The Shoemaker's Holiday " and " Patient Grissill," with 
their firmly conceived personages and their robust and vital 
prose. 

The play is founded upon the German folk-story of For- 
tunatus and his sons, but the immediate source has not been 
discovered. The first known prose version of the story in 
English belongs to the second half of the seventeenth century,-'' 
but there may have been an earlier, as Halliwell thinks. The 
suggestion has been made that Dekker may have read the story 

"Literary Relations, 213-214. 

^* There is no reason for thinking that Dekker ever collaborated with 
Marlowe or that he added any of the comic scenes of Doctor Faustus. 
This theory should have fallen to the ground when it was discovered that 
the entry for December, 1597, in Collier's edition of the Diary, crediting 
him with such additions, was a forgery. Fleay, however, has continued to 
find in these scenes " the style and metre " and the " tone of thought " of 
Dekker, as well as " minor indications of his handiwork, such as ' baw- 
waw ' and the introduction of fireworks " (Ap. A in Ward's ed. of Doctor 
Faustus). No one else has expressed any confidence in this internal evi- 
dence. Ward considers it " of a doubtful kind " (Eng, Dram. Lit., II, 
468) ; and Greg, who is otherwise rather inclined to agree with Fleay, 
"hardly conclusive" (Diary, II, 169). Bullen roundly asserts that there is 
not " the slightest tittle of evidence to convict Dekker." (Introd. to 
Works of Marlowe.) 

^'Pointed out by Herford, pp. 215-216. 

^ For a discussion of English prose versions, see Literary Relations, 
Appendix III. 
4 



34 

in a Dutch version, possibly an earlier edition of that dated 
1631.^^ A simpler solution rests upon my theory that Dekker 
was at some time during his youth a sojourner in the Low- 
Countries. Since German books must have found their way 
over the border, he could there have read the German story 
itself, for it would have been no hardship for one acquainted 
with Dutch to worry the meaning out of an attractive tale 
written in the simplest possible German. From the miscel- 
laneous mass of adventure and intrigue provided by the story, 
Dekker chose the incidents with taste and dramatic tact. 
Shadow is his creation and so are the faithful Orleans and the 
other nobles at the English court. In spite of the profoundly 
tragic motive put into the story by amplifying the part of For- 
tune and by making the choice of riches a moral issue that 
must result in downfall and death, there is, besides the comedy, 
so much spectacle — Fortune mounting to her throne on the 
necks of chained and conquered kings, the fairy troops, Vice 
and Virtue and their trees, the dance of satyrs about the dead 
Fortunatus, together with considerable song and music — as to 
make the reader partly understand the otherwise amazing de- 
scription of the play as " a pleasant comedy." 

Since even in his maturest work Dekker showed little skill in 
structure, it is not surprising to find that " Old Fortunatus " 
sins more than ordinarily; a part of the confusion no doubt 
arose from the successive recastings that the play suffered, 
especially the introduction of Vice and Virtue with their be- 
fogging relations to Fortune,^^ and perhaps the relegation of 
Andelocia's serious wrong-doings to the chorus, for there is 
nothing in the action that deserves the punishment of death. 
Some minor difficulties, too, perhaps sprang from a revision 
that was not merely a process of adding but one of combining, 
omitting and condensing. The promise of Fortunatus to make 
a purse for the King of Babylon was probably intended to be a 

^ For this suggestion and for a discussion of Dekker's treatment of his 
source, see Dr. Hans Scherer's introduction to his critical edition of the 
play. Munchener Beitrdge, band 21, 3-14. 

^ Relations that probably did not trouble the audience chiefly interested 
in Dekker's intention to compliment the Queen by making her superior not 
only to Fortune but also to the Virtue of the play. Cp. with Peele's com- 
pliment in The Arraignment of Paris. 



35 

boastful lie, for Andelocia tells the same story to Agripyne; 
but more serious is the promise of Fortune to return to 
Andelocia the hat and the purse, for he never sees the hat 
again and he gets the purse, only to lose his life for his pains. 

But notwithstanding every criticism that can be brought 
against " Old Fortunatus," it is the only play of its kind in 
the English drama: there is in it a fresh childlike joy in the 
marvellous, something of the young hunger that would devour 
the universe; and to this is added a splendid scorn for money 
and all other dross, and the confident belief that wisdom, or 
virtue, is the only good of all possible goods ; there is, besides, 
gay and graceful comedy, with a fool, clown, page — ^but no, 
all names are too gross for the incomparable Shadow ; there is 
the apotheosis of constant love; and above all there is an 
abundance of poetry, the pure magic of which Dekker never 
surpassed except in some limpid passages that reach the very 
springs of human tenderness. Although he had listened to 
Marlowe, to Peele, and to Spenser, he had indeed in himself 
"poetry enough for anything." And since this discussion of 
the play has taken note of little but questions of scholar- 
ship, let it close with Orleans' famous worship of Deformity, 
a speech that the audience was intended to remember in a later 
scene. 

" Thou art a traitor to that white and red. 
Which, sitting on her cheeks, being Cupid's throne. 
Is my heart's sovereign : O, when she is dead. 
This wonder, beauty, shall be found in none. 
Now Agripyne's not mine, I vow to be 
In love with nothing but deformity. 
O fair Deformity, I muse all eyes 
Are not enamored of thee : thou did'st never 
Murder men's hearts, or let them pine like wax. 
Melting against the sun of thy disdain ;^ 
Thou art a faithful nurse to chastity ; 
Thy beauty is not like to Agripyne's, 
For care, and age, and sickness hers deface, 
But thine's eternal. O Deformity, 
Thy fairness is not like to Agripyne's, 
For dead, her beauty will no beauty have, 
But thy face looks most lovely in the grave." 

^ Swinburne's emendation of " thy destiny." The Age of Shakespeare," 
p. 66, footnote. Scherer and Rhys omit " thy " and retain " destiny." 



36 

Unworthy to be named in the same breath with " Old For- 
tunatus " is " The Whore of Babylon," the second of the plays 
that show signs of early work. To the most casual reader it 
must be clear that it was first acted long before it was printed 
in 1607. The title-^ perhaps and the preface certainly were 
affected by the excitement following the failure of the Gun- 
powder Plot; and the same cause may have brought about 
the revival of the play. As the reasons for assigning it to an 
early date are chiefly internal, it will be necessary to speak 
briefly of the contents. They are, as the title indicates, partly 
controversial, dealing with Catholic plots against Elizabeth's 
throne and life as well as with " the greatness, magnanimity, 
constancy, clemency, and other the incomparable heroical vir- 
tues of our late Queen.''^^ Events are not treated in exact 
chronological order : " I write as a poet, not as an historian 
and . . . these two do not live under one law,"^'' said Dekker 
hotly in the preface, replying to critics who complained that he 
falsified " the account of time." His obvious intention was to 
marshal before the audience all the great public facts of the 
Queen's life up to about 1 594-1 596: her accession to the 
throne, treated in dumb show only ; the marriage negotiations, 
the invasion of the Jesuit missionaries, the plots against her 
life, including that of Dr. Lopez, who was executed in the 
summer of 1594, the Irish disorders, the aid sent to the Nether- 
lands and to a pretender to the Portuguese throne, the signing 
of the death warrant of Mary of Scotland, and, as climax and 
conclusion, the defeat of the Spanish Armada. As Dekker did 
not feel that he could use real names, especially in the case of 
the more exalted personages, he borrowed some of his nomen- 
clature from " The Faerie Queene " and the names Oberon and 
Titania from " A Midsummer Night's Dream." In his use of 
such " tropical and shadowed colors " he was again following, 
though very far off, the lead of Lyly, who had clothed with 
allegory his presentation of contemporary history. 

While it is hard to imagine that the play ever had much 

^ The Whore of Babylon. As It was acted by the Princes Servants. 
Vexat Censura Colunibas. 
''Lectori, P., II, 189. 
""Idem, 190. 



37 

coherence, a corrupt text makes the matter worse.-^ A glance 
at the dramatis personae shows that some of the original char- 
acters have dropped out,^^ and a glance at the text, that at least 
one of the old characters has been re-christened.^^ The play 
shows other signs of revision. There is an allegorical passage 
about the Moon^° which can have applied in the first instance 
only to Mary Stuart, but which goes on, with the " she " 
changed to "he," in lines applicable only to the "Luciferan 
insolence of the Earl of Essex."^^ The change is easy to 
explain : in his enumeration of great events Dekker could 
hardly have omitted mention of Mary's death, but he could 
not have long dwelt upon it even during the reign of Elizabeth, 
hardly at all during that of Mary's son. A second alteration is 
found in the elaborate, awkward, and unhappy passage de- 
scribing King James as a second Phoenix.^^ ^ third and prob- 
ably later set of changes is to be found in the mention of " The 
Isle of Gulls," written in 1605 or 1606, and in a possible con- 
temporary reference to the presence of women at executions — 

^ The confusion of Kings, in particular the Second and the Third, is 
especially annoying, for it has some bearing on the date of the play. On 
p. 204, the Third King is Spain ; on p. 205, Italy or Rome : what land is 
represented by the Third King on p. 206, who says of the Irish nation, 
" Yet we do succor him " ? One's first instinct might be to answer " Spain," 
for towards the end of the century Spanish soldiers landed in Ireland to 
help the rebels. But some twenty years earlier Sir Thomas Stukely, after 
he turned traitor, received ships and soldiers from the Pope for the invasion 
of Ireland, although the expedition never reached its destination ; and in 
1580 a small Italian party was cut to pieces on Irish soil by Lord Grey. 

^ Three of the four " ladies attendant." 

^ Ropus (who is Dr. Lopez) becomes Lupus, p. 231; doubtless there 
seemed less reason for disguising his name as the date of his execution 
receded. 

^ P., II, 246-247. 

*^ This is Fleay's interpretation and should stand until his critics offer a 
better. A second moon passage confirms the reading as far as Mary is 
concerned. P., II, 257, last two lines. 

^^ P., II, 234, Fleay thinks, without reason, that Dekker did not write 
this passage ; in the King's Entertainment he again speaks of James as a 
second Phoenix rising from the ashes of the first. P., I, 302. 

Perhaps " the Albanois " was given that name in order again to com- 
pliment the King. 



38 

both spoken by Plain-dealing in a scene^^ that reads rather 
like an interpolation, for Plain-dealing's satire upon London, 
especially its ordinaries, has nothing whatever to do with the 
main plot or any branch of it f* its purpose may have been to 
give humor to an uninteresting play.^^ 

Fleay identifies "The Whore of Babylon" with "Truth's 
Supplication to Candlelight," entered in the Diary as a Dekker 
play in January, 1600; he may be right, for Truth appears in 
the prologue and in the dumb show, and is actually a very minor 
personage, rather sweetly characterized as having 

" such pretty and delightful songs 
That you will count your sorest labour light, 
And time well spent only to hear her sing." 

But if this identity be granted, we must look, again with Fleay, 
for a still earlier version.^® For, in the first place, the general 
character of "The Whore of Babylon" is, even for 1600, 
highly archaic: it has a large amount of dumb show;^''' an 
undisguised morality element in the parts played by Truth, 
Time, and Plain-dealing ; a scholastic argument f^ signs of early 
influences exhibited in the borrowings from Spenser and from 
"A Midsummer Night's Dream," and in the attempted imitation 

^P., II, 212-215. 

'* Elsewhere Plain-dealing is a simple servant, rather asking for informa- 
tion than giving it, and his talk is related to the plot. See P., II, 241-246. 

^ There were probably changes, certainly a cutting down, in the passage 
about the Prince or the King of Portugal, p. 220. It seems to have been 
founded upon a misapprehension of the facts, for King Sebastian, slain at 
the battle of Alcazar, 1578, left no children. Queen Elizabeth's promise of 
aid, however, was fulfilled when in 1589 she sent a fleet to help Antonio, 
nephew of Sebastian, the then pretender to the crown. The real facts of 
the case, however, were so little understood in England, even at the end of 
the century, that people received as truth the adventures of a false Sebas- 
tian who pretended to have survived the battle, and in 1601 Dekker and 
Chettle wrote a play, now lost, founded upon those adventures. 

^ The payment of only two pounds for Truth's Supplication rather favors 
this point of view, though of course Henslowe's entries can hardly be 
regarded as telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 

'^ P., II, 192, 204, 227, 243, 254. 

^ Idem, 239-241. 



39 

of Lyly's method of dealing with contemporary history.^® In 
the second place, there is almost unredeemed indistinctness of 
characterization, the dialogue is frequently uneasy and stilted, 
and often couched in clumsy phrasing; there is almost no 
humor and hardly a touch of Dekker's peculiar humanity from 
beginning to end: — impossible feats, one would say, in 1600, 
when he had to his credit, besides many lost plays, " Old 
Fortunatus," "The Sun's Darling," "The Shoemaker's Holi- 
day," and a large share in " Patient Grissill " ; impossible, even 
taking into consideration the intractability of the subject.*** 
The most brilliant military event during the last decade of the 
Queen's life was the taking of Cadiz by Essex. This would 
have furnished Dekker with just the sort of material he needed 
and his theory of chronology proper to a poet would not have 
prevented his using it almost anywhere in his play. The ab- 
sence of any such material may be regarded as significant, and 
the date of the play in its original form may be set down as 
falling between the execution of Doctor Lopez in the middle of 
1594 and the fall of Cadiz two years later. With this date 
agree, so far as I have recognized them, the allusions not yet 
noticed.*^ 

^' Perhaps also such chorus-like effects as are found on pp. 201, 203, 241, 
247, 255. 

*° The somewhat elaborate accounts of the attempts upon the life of the 
Queen made by Paridel (Parry) and Ropus or Lupus (Lopez) may also, 
perhaps, be considered as pointing to a date when such events were fresh in 
the memories of men. He3rwood', in his // you know not me, you know 
nobody, also uses the story of Dr. Parry, but very briefly. He either bor- 
rowed from Dekker or they both used the same source. 

*^ There is a reference to the massacre of St. Bartholomew, p. 221; a 
reminiscence of the Old Hamlet in the passage about " the air's invulnerable 
breast," p. 227, pointed out by Koeppel ; and an adaptation, as it seems to 
me, of a well-known line in Richard II in the following passage : 

" Her kingdom wears a girdle wrought of waves 
Set thick with precious stones," 

p. 1 961. Perhaps the lines, p. 218, that bring together " maiden shores " and 
" dolphins " were written with the vague memory of a famous passage from 
A Midsummer Night's Dream in the poet's head. Koeppel thinks that the 
line " I stand, colossus-like, striding o'er seas," p. 205, is an echo of 
Cassius's 



40 

This mixture of allegory and controversy, loyalty and 
patriotism, seems to have been very well liked. While its 
popularity doubtless sprang chiefly from its spectacular effects, 
including, besides the dumb show and other such elements 
already mentioned, music and dancing, the reception of am- 
bassadors and kings, and the production of the " scarlet- 
colored" beast, it offered a more legitimate appeal in its em- 
phasis upon well-known and well-loved traits of character in 
the Queen, an emphasis that is interesting both to the student 
of history and to the student of Dekker. Although he paid a 
number of perfunctory compliments to James, the lasting 
object of his admiration was Queen Elizabeth. Aside from the 
flattery in the Court plays, there are various passages in his 
prose that, after she had passed beyond the reach of human 
words, eloquently extol her greatness. The first is in "The 
Wonderful Year " : she was summoned, he writes, to appear in 
the Star chamber of heaven. 

" The summons made her start, but having an invincible spirit, did not 
amaze her: yet whom would not the certain news of parting from a king- 
dom amaze? But she knew where to find a richer, and therefore lightlier 
regarded the loss of this, and thereupon made ready for the heavenly 
coronation, being (which was most strange) most dutiful to obey that so 
many years so powerfully commanded."*^ 

*" G., I, 86. 

About four years later, in " The Seven Deadly Sins," a com- 
pliment to James is preceded by a fervent passage about Eliza- 
beth addressed to London : 

" She, that for almost half a hundred of years, of thy Nurse became thy 
Mother and laid thee in her bosom ; whose head was full of cares for thee 
whilst thou slept upon softer pillows than down. She that wore thee 
always on her breast as the richest jewel in her kingdom, who had con- 
tinually her eye upon thee, and her heart with thee: whose chaste hand 



" He doth bestride the narrow world 
Like a colossus," 

but aside from the unlikelihood that so obvious a figure should have re- 
mained unused before Shakespere, it seems in the Dekker quotation almost 
inevitable ; for Spain is described as " standing " upon the Pillars of 
Hercules. 



41 

clothed thy rulers in scarlet, and thy inhabitants in robes of peace : even 
she was taken from thee when thou wert most in fear to lose her."** 

Again, in " The Dead Term," Westminster is made to boast 
that within her precincts Elizabeth lies buried, "who if she 
had no monument at all consecrated to memory, yet were her 
name sufficient to eternize her sacred worth and the wonders 
of her forty-four years government."^* This quotation shows 
good judgment in the citizen; perhaps the judgment was less 
good that prefixed to the collection of prayers known as " The 
Eagle " a prayer made by the Queen.*^ The significant thing 
is not, however, as Swinburne would have us believe, the 
inferiority of her English to his, but the fact that Dekker felt 
that he was enhancing the value of his book by quoting the 
ruler in whose " spacious times " his youth and early manhood 
had been lived. In spite of the general inadequacy of " The 
Whore of Babylon " and of Dekker's inability to use Eliza- 
beth's own vigorous language, many of her great qualities are 
actually suggested : her confidence in the wise ministers she 
had chosen, her aversion to entering into entangling foreign 
alliances, her insight into character, her unwillingness to shed 
blood, and her great personal courage. 

The play requires little other comment. It should perhaps 
be noticed that the controversial element is necessarily rather 
political than ecclesiastical, that Rome stands less for a false 
faith than for a national foe that would undermine the inde- 
pendence and the prosperity of England. In this connection 
it may be observed that the only one of the characters that 
receives a touch of Dekker's intimate sympathy is the brilliant 
and ill-starred Jesuit, Edmund Campion, " Campeius " in the 
play. While in construction this drama is naught, and while 
the general level of the verse is mediocre, much of the poetry 
would be efficient if the subject were more interesting, and 
here and there occur lines of memorable charm, such as the 
following fragment that has in it all the magic of that which 
it describes: 

«G., II, II. 
**G., IV, 19. 
" G., V, 39-40. 



42 

" Five summers have scarce drawn their glimmering nights 
Through the moon's silver bow ..." 

With Dekker's early work should be classed his share in 
the play entitled " The Weakest Goeth to the Wall,"" a mix- 
ture of pseudo-history, romantic comedy, and realistic comedy, 
printed in 1600 without the author's name. Apparently 
Edward Phillips was the first to assign the play to Webster 
and Dekker ; he was followed by Winstanley, but Sir Egerton 
Brydges, in an enlarged edition of Phillips' " Theatrum Poe- 
tarum" in 1800, remarked that they were mistaken. Fleay 
believes that Munday wrote it about 1584;*^ Ward alone of 
recent scholars who have expressed an opinion upon the matter 
thinks that the humor " bears a certain resemblance to the 
handiwork of Dekker."*® 

The most important of the humorous characters in this old 
play is " the fag-end of a tailor," " in plain English a botcher,"- 
named Barnaby Bunch, who goes on his way singing, punning, 
rhyming, simple yet shrewd, with an "honorable humor to 
learn languages and see fashions," kindhearted for the most 
part, but blunt at times, even vituperative upon occasion — 
much the most lifelike person in a play that is otherwise well 
worth reading. The scenes in which he is prominent must 
have been introduced chiefly for their humor, but whether they 
belonged to the original play or whether they were added to a 
revised version. Bunch has some slight share in the plot as it 
has come down to us; in the Flanders town whither a noble 
family had fled for refuge, he tries to protect the two women 
from their landlord, a bad-hearted Duchman, and tactfully 

** " The Weakest Goeth to the Wall. As it hath been sundry times plaid 
by the right-honourable Earle of Oxenford, Lord great Chamberlaine of 
England his Servants." Included by Hazlitt in vol. 4 of his edition of 
Webster. London, 1857. All references are to this edition. 

" As acted by the Earl of Oxford's servants, a company which, he con- 
tinues, is heard of as in London only between 1584 and 1587. Chr., II, 

To me the probability that Chettle wrote the greater part of the play 
seems strong ; the love scenes, for example, have the kind of sentimentality 
found in similar scenes in Hoffman; and they are written in the same kind 
of verse. 

" Eng. Dram. Lit., Ill, 56. 



43 

removes him when he would be in the way. Upon Bunch's 
first appearance*^ — in France — he is equipped, say the stage 
directions, " with a pair of shears, a hand-basket with a crossr 
bottom of thread, three or four pair of old stockings, pieces 
of fustian, cloth, etc." In his opening soliloquy he explains 
that he has been a London ale-draper. Then more stage direc- 
tions tell of his hanging stockings on a stick and of his sewing 
a hose-heel. As he works, he sings a ballad, alternating every 
line with directions to an otherwise unmentioned Kate to heat 
properly his pressing iron. In later speeches too he talks about 
his trade, and he is equally specific about his new work when 
he becomes sexton at Ardres,^" promising, for example, " the 
honest prentices," if they please him, not to " ring the four 
o'clock bell till it be past five."^^ He has a sort of simplicity, 
as when he begs his friends who are going up to " high France " 
to send the plague down to Picardy that he may get money by 
digging graves, and when a messenger arrives, he asks him if 
he has not brought some such commodity down to Ardres."^ 
He is full of puns good and bad: the name of his host Jacob 
van Smelt supplies him with many an opportunity, and he 
shows an interesting knowledge of etymology when he de- 
scribes himself, at that moment mending stockings, as being 
"a corrector of extravagant hose feet."^^ Possessed of a 
rough but genial humanity, he would pay the debts of his noble 
friends with the score of stivers that he has earned ;^* when the 
women are left to his protection, he cries, " I'll break my heart 
to do them good,"^^ and later, in the same scene, " God be 
wi' ye, sir, I could weep, but my tears will not pleasure ye."^" 

In nearly every respect Barnaby Bunch has a family like- 
ness to Dekker's clowns. They usually have a trade : even the 
family servant Babulo is a basket-maker;^'^ Firk and his com- 

*' Act I, sc. 2, pp. 228-233. 

"Act V, sc. 2, pp. 294-295. 

"Act IV, sc. 3, p. 283. 

'^Act IV, sc. 3, p. 282, and V, 2, p. 294. 

" Act I, sc. 2, p. 232. 

"Act II, sc. 3, p. 251. 

^ Idem, p. 252. 

^'Act II, sc. 3, p. 252. 

'^Patient Grissill. 



44 

rades are shoemakers ;^^ Scumbroth a cook;^^ Bilbo has been 
an apprentice and when the play opens has servants under 
him.®" They bring their tools or the insignia of their trade 
upon the stage; they enumerate them and talk light-heartedly 
and punningly about their work. Except for their acquaint- 
ance with Latin and some other knowledge unusual in their 
class, Dekker's clownish characters are also consistent; they 
are strongly individualized and no two are alike, save in a 
shrewd simplicity united to an unusual warmheartedness that 
seems peculiar to Dekker. 

Again, many of Dekker's fun-making characters use a 
speech full of repetition, of heaping of synonyms,^^ and of 
parallel phrases in twos or threes to express haste or swift- 
ness.®^ Barnaby Bunch often talks after this fashion. His 
praise of ale illustrates the first peculiarity ; " fresh ale, firm 
ale, nappy ale, nippitate ale, irregular, secular ale, courageous, 
contagious ale, alcumistical alef^ and so does his rough re- 
proach of Jacob : " Now mine host rob-pot, empty cask, beer- 
sucker, gudgeon! — smelt, I should say.""* Illustrations of the 
second peculiarity may be seen in such quotations as the fol- 
lowing: "Fie! fie! down with my stall, up with my wares, 
shift for myself ;"*^ " It would clear my sight, comfort my 
heart, and stuff my veins ; "®® or, " if ye have any hose to heel, 
breeches to mend, or buttons to set on, let me have your 
work."" 

^* The Shoemaker's Holiday. 

"^If It be not Good. 

^ Match Me in London. 

•* This hardly needs an illustration, but one may be given. In the course 
of a single speech Simon Eyre cries out, " It's a mad life to be a lord 
mayor; it's a stirring life, a fine life, a velvet life, a careful life. . . . His 
Majesty is welcome ; he shall have good cheer, delicate cheer, princely 
cheer." P., I, 62. 

•^ As " On with your masks, up with your sails, and westward ho ! " 
Westward Ho, P., II, 322 ; or " No man I wrong, no man I fear, no man I 
fee." 2 Honest Whore, P., II, 104. 

"'Act I, sc. 2, p. 229. 

"Act HI, sc. 4, p, 263. 

*" Act I, sc. 2, p. 232. 

•* Idem, p. 229. 

" Act I, sc. 3, p. 237. 



45 

Next to Barnaby Bunch the most prominent person in the 
reahstic comedy is the Jacob van Smelt already mentioned. 
For the most part he speaks Dutch, or Dutch mixed with 
English, very similar to that spoken by the disguised Lacy and 
the skipper in " The Shoemaker's Holiday " and Hans van 
Belch in " Westward Ho." 

The presence of two such characters in the same scenes 
creates a strong presumption in favor of Dekker, not dimin- 
ished by the fact that his name has once been associated with 
the play in which they occur, and strengthened by a number 
of details too minute to be mentioned here.^* I am inclined 
to think, however, that he was not the original writer of these 
scenes but that he worked them over with a very thorough 
hand. In any case they should probably be assigned to a com- 
paratively early date in his history, for the stage spectacle 
in the first scene is conventional, and the dialogue throughout 
at times crude and violent. Although his scenes in this old 
play add little to Dekker's fame, they have an interest apart 
from their intrinsic value in that they conceivably helped him 
to see the dramatic possibilities hidden in the tale of a shoe- 
maker who becomes lord mayor. 

The three plays discussed in this chapter are so unlike in 
character and the probability of lost plays is so great that 
there are grounds only for few and scattered generalizations. 
The order of writing is possibly that in which they have here 
been taken up : it seems so to me. " Old Fortunatus " is a 
drama of youth as surely as " Romeo and Juliet," and the 
rags of antiquity that hang about the " Babylon " play belong 
in part to a young attempt to put together all the elements of 
a taking spectacle; the robust characterization of Barnaby 
Bunch should come later. While we know little about 
Dekker's theatrical relations, the history of " Old Fortunatus " 
seems to indicate a connection with Henslowe as early as 
1596, but there is no certainty that he was not at the same 
time writing or revamping plays elsewhere. Although he was 
never to repeat the peculiar charm of " Old Fortunatus," some 

^ Such a semi-pun, for example, as Bunch's " By my shears, and that's 
a shaving oath " (Act III, so. 5, p. 268) is wholly in Dekker's manner. 



46 

elements of his later development may be seen in these plays : 
his liking for the romantic and the idealistic which was not 
to leave him wholly after it ceased to be popular on the stage, 
his inclination towards wholesome realism, and towards both 
the comedy of wit and the comedy that consists in a kindly 
but humorous interpretation of character. Dialect he con- 
tinued to use, feebly in the broken English of the supposed 
French and Irish, with power in mixed English and Dutch. 
In the group considered as a whole, there are few hints of 
Dekker's great power to delineate character, none at all of his 
success in depicting certain types of women. In dramatic 
technique Dekker had much to learn: structure he never 
mastered, but no later play is so incoherent as " Old Fortu- 
natus" or so shapeless as "The Whore of Babylon." In 
lyrical poetry and in Lylian prose, his power was full-grown, 
but he had yet to put into his verse dramatic appropriate- 
ness and into his prose the directness of the people's speech. 
Enough has been said elsewhere about his permanent tastes, 
but a word may be added to note the sympathy that could 
pass from the love of the courtly Orleans to the humble duties 
of the sexton at Ardres, or from the poverty of the neglected 
Catholic scholar or the charm of the despised Irish race to a 
rapture over the achievements of Drake. 



CHAPTER IV 
With Henslowe, i 598-1600 

From January, 1598, to the end of 1602 we have in Hens- 
lowe's " Diary " a rich account of Dekker's dramatic activities. 
Yet it is not complete : the record for 1600 is broken by a gap 
of a month or thereabouts, and that for 1601 mentions but a 
single play; it is from other sources that we learn what he 
was doing that year. Although by the close of 1602 he ap- 
parently ceased to be one of Henslowe's regular men, early 
in 1604 the "Diary" mentions the sale of " i Honest Whore" 
to his former manager. These plays written for Henslowe 
were acted under his management by the Admiral's men at 
first at the Rose and after some uncertain date in the latter 
half of 1600 at the newly built Fortune; but from August, 
1602, to the end of the year Dekker's plays were acted by 
Worcester's men at the Rose still under Henslowe's manage- 
ment. 

During these five years that industry so praised by more 
than one contemporary is known to have assisted in the com- 
position of some thirty plays and to have produced eight 
alone.^ Still larger would have been the output if Dekker had 
maintained the pace set by the first two years. During the 
year that closed with December, 1598, he wrote two plays 

^ See Greg's convenient table of Dekker's plays written for Henslowe, 
Diary, Part II, 367-368. His interpretation of difficult entries and his 
identification of plays that fall within this period have, for the greater part, 
been followed in this study. He identifies Bad May Amend altered to 
Worse Afeard than Hurt with 2 Hannibal and Hermes, and Two Shapes, or 
Two Harpies, with Caesar's Fall. 

In the enumeration above, I have excluded Truth's Supplication to 
Candlelight as probably identical with The Whore of Babylon, and Old 
Fortunatus as written earlier, together with alterations of and additions to 
plays. The Introduction to the Civil Wars of France is included as prob- 
ably a separate play. On that head, see Greg, Diary, H, 197. 

47 



48 

alone and fourteen in collaboration with others. Every month 
except February has its record, and as on the first of March 
he was paid for a play written without aid, that month is 
accounted for. It may be significant that in all the collabo- 
rated plays of the first part of the year he shared the responsi- 
bility with two or three others, in the latter part with but one. 
The year 1599 was not less busy, for though he assisted in the 
writing of but six plays he wrote four alone, and in addition 
revised " Old Fortunatus " and prepared it for presentation 
at Court. 1600 saw the production of four collaborated plays, 
one written alone, and one 1598 play altered for the Court. 
Except for these alterations there is no record of any work 
between September, 1600, and April, 1601. During the year 
1602 he was paid for collaborating in five plays and for one 
comedy, besides some miscellaneous work, — alterations, addi- 
tions, a prologue and an epilogue. 

If Dekker worked hard, he was rewarded, contrary to the 
usual opinion, by a fair income. Henslowe's ordinary price 
for a play was £6, which should be multiplied by eight to 
lift it to terms of modern money. If these figures are borne 
in mind it will be readily seen that Dekker's receipts during 
the first year of the period under consideration were in the 
neighborhood of £340,^ during the second year somewhat more. 
So far as we can judge from the evidence, he was among the 
best paid of Henslowe's writers. We have seen that he 
received £9 for his work upon " Old Fortunatus " when an 
old play. For " Page of Plymouth," collaborated with Jonson, 
£8 were paid, and for " Patient Grissill," collaborated with 
Chettle and Haughton, possibly the large sum of ten guineas. 
The " Diary " also records that he was getting ten shillings 
for a prologue and an epilogue at a time when Chettle and 
Middleton were receiving half that sum for similar work. 

Of the thirty collaborated plays the greater number is com- 
posed of chronicle-histories, and the most prolific year in that 
species is, as we might expect, the first. Ten draw their 
material from British history, ranging from such an unidenti- 

- He wrote two plays alone, collaborated with one other playwright upon 
five, with two others upon four, and with three others upon five. 



49 

fied subject as " Connan Prince of Cornwall " or such an 
early one as " Earl Godwin,"®^ to the history of Lady Jane 
Grey; three deal with the civil wars of France, one with 
Sebastian, King of Portugal.* There is a group of plays on 
classical subjects, the most interesting title among which is 
"Troilus and Cressida."^ Another group of three belongs to 
the type called the domestic tragedy, especially popular be- 
tween 1597 and 1603, which had found its most famous early 
expression in " Arden of Feversham " and was to be rendered 
in its most unrelieved horror in " The Yorkshire Tragedy."* 
" Jephthah " is a late representative of the biblical play, and 
Dekker provided a prologue and an epilogue for " Pontius 
Pilate." Among those unclassified, some like " Christmas 
Comes but Once a Year," point to comedy. " A Chance 
Medley " may be a comedy of errors or possibly a tragedyJ 
" Fair Constance of Rome " suggests Chaucer, and " The 
Golden Ass and Cupid and Psyche" seems to be explicit. 
Nothing is known of " The Seven Wise Masters." 

^ For a possible source of this play, see Creizenach, Geschichte des 
neueren Dramas, IV, 205—206. 

* Founded on Munday's translation of a French account of the adventures 
of Marco Tullio, who pretended to be the long-dead Sebastian. It should 
be noticed that this is Dekker's second play with a Moor in it ; the first 
was The Spanish Moor's Tragedy of the preceding year. Perhaps these two 
plays explain Jonson's gibe, if he intended any, and Dekker's supposed reply 
in the following passages from Satiromastix : "As for Crispinus, that 
Crispin-ass and Fannius his play-dresser, who, to make the muses believe 
their subjects' ears were starv'd and that there was a dearth of poesy, cut 
an innocent Moor i' th' middle, to serve him in twice ; and when he had done, 
made Paul's work of it . . ." P., I, 212. 

On the supposed evidence of this passage, Fleay assigns to Dekker 
" Stewtley," entered on the Diary, Dec. 11, 1596. The extant play, The 
Famous History of the Life and Death of Captain Thomas Stukeley shows 
no trace of Dekker's style. 

^ For a "plot" of a play on the Trojan War, possibly Dekker's, see Greg, 
Hensloive Papers, pp. 142 and 144. 

' For such tragedies, see Professor Thorndike, The Influence of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher on Shakespere, 99, and Creizenach, Geschichte, IV, 
237-242. 

^ Greg says that while the phrase had come to mean a series of random 
actions, it had also a legal sense, meaning a casualty not purely accidental. 
Diary, II, 196. 
5 



50 

Dekker's most frequent collaborators in these plays were, 
at first, Chettle, Drayton, and Wilson, but the name of the 
last soon disappears. Chettle and Drayton share the honors 
in sixteen plays each, both names occurring most frequently 
in connection with the chronicle-histories, a species for which 
Drayton had a special aptitude, but Chettle had a hand in 
almost every other variety too except the biblical. Munday 
was Dekker's sole collaborator in "Jephthah" and aided him 
in two other plays. Heywood collaborated in two plays, and 
the undistinguished Smith and a little known Hathaway in one 
each. "Young Haughton" helped write two plays, one of 
which still exists. Other and for the most part more inter- 
esting collaborators, who will be discussed later, were Jonson, 
Day, Middleton, and Webster. 

Out of this library of collaborated drama but one whole 
play and the fragments of another have certainly come down 
to us.® If we feel that we could spare the latter, represented 
by " Sir Thomas Wyatt," very different is the case with 
" Patient Grissill," for nowhere else has Dekker so convinc- 
ingly portrayed the loveliness of family life, poor in every- 
thing but affection and content, or exhibited more winningly 
the sweetness of his humor. It is then no comfort to reflect 
that in the lost plays under discussion Dekker did not work 
alone. Two of them call for special regret. The first is 
" Page of Plymouth," written in conjunction with Jonson and 
paid for in August and September of 1599. The subject is 
indicated by the title of a contemporary ballad : " The Lamenta- 
tion of Master Page's wife of Plymouth, who being enforced 
by her Parents to wed him against her will, did most wickedly 
consent to his murder for the love of George Strangwidge ; for 
which fact she suffered death at Bar[n] stable in Devonshire. 
Written with her own hand a little before her death." It was 
one that would appeal to Dekker's sympathies, for enforced 
marriage was an evil of society that early and late roused his 

* The largest destruction of Dekker's plays doubtless occurred when the 
Fortune was burned. He also suffered from Warburton's carelessness. 
Possibly some plays were lost when the Cockpit was burned in, 161 6. See 
Bullen, Introd. to his edition of The Works of John Day, 14, note. 



51 

special horror. If each poet even approached his best work in 
this play, if to Dekker's warmhearted and life-like character- 
ization was added the careful art of Jonson, then our loss is 
indeed great.*^ The second play is "Jephthah," collaborated 
with Munday, which was recorded in May, 1602, after what 
was for Dekker a long period of inactivity. The pathos of 
the story and the charm that the Bible exercised upon him 
perhaps called out finer qualities of heart and mind than " Page 
of Plymouth." 

When we come to the plays written alone, only two^^ of 
which survive, our sense of loss is necessarily greater, especially 
since, as it seems to me, the early work, even that collaborated, 
shows a singleness of aim and a clarity of moral outlook 
sometimes blurred in the later plays. The titles of some of 
the lost plays more or less indicate the subject or the treatment. 
" Truth's Supplication to Candlelight," whether identical with 
" The Whore of Babylon " or not, points to allegory ; " Bear a 
Brain, or Better Late than Never "^^ to comedy. Of the " Intro- 
duction to the Civil Wars of France" we know nothing, not 
even what civil wars form the subject. "Orestes' Furies"" 
claims relationship with other classical plays. " Medicine for 
a Curst Wife" belongs to the series in which patient and 
impatient wives get punished in pretty equal measure — a sub- 
ject that Dekker treated, with no sympathy for passive obedi- 
ence, in " Patient Grissill " and in a sub-plot of " The Honest 
Whore." Nothing is certainly known of " Fortune's Tennis," 
but Greg suggests that as it was one of the first plays taken 
in hand after the company left the Rose, some allusion to the 
new house may have been intended.^^ The title of the remain- 
ing play, " The Triplicity^* of Cuckolds," has been supposed to 

* See Creizenach, Geschichte, IV, 240. 

^"Phaeton under its later title The Sun's Darling, and The Shoemaker's 
Holiday. 

" Certainly not to be identified with Look about You as Fleay suggests. 
See Greg, II, 204. However, Greg's identification of this comedy with The 
Shoemaker" s Holiday has nothing to support it. 

" Fleay : Orestes Furious. 

'"^ Diary, II, 215. 

" Triplicity means triangle. 



52 

be explicit: if it were an intrigue play, it forms the only speci- 
men of its class in the list of Dekker's plays down to 1604. It 
is necessary, however, to remember that titles cannot be wholly 
trusted, since they often indicate merely the features expected 
to attract an audience rather than the plots in their true propor- 
tion. For example, the apparently full title, " The Honest 
Whore, with the Humors of the Patient Man and the Longing 
Wife," ignores the exquisite love story of Hippolito and In- 
felice, so purely told and in such lovely verse. 

This period of playwriting was preceded by the production 
in 1598 of a long religious poem, which is fairly thrilling when 
compared with Middleton's " Wisdom of Solomon Para- 
phrased " produced the year before, but is still so dull that 
Swinburne would not lay it upon Dekker's shoulders, especially 
as it is signed " T. D.," initials, he remarks, that Thomas 
Deloney might claim, and perhaps others. But the episle-dedi- 
catory of the edition of 1618, the earliest that has come down 
to us, is wholly in Dekker's manner, and as he always retained 
the ability to write uninspired verse, there seems to be no 
reason to take from him the credit of this popular and oft- 
reprinted^^ poem. It was registered to print January 5, 1598, 
as " The Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, son of Vespasian," 
and published as " Canaan's Calamity, Jerusalem's Misery, and 
England's Mirror." The most conspicuous incident, related 
with astonishing fluency and flatness, is the story of Miriam, 
who killed and partly devoured her young son. In this story, 
Dekker seems to follow Nash's " Christ's Tears over Jeru- 
salem," a likeness that has been explained by their use of the 
same source ;^^ even so, Nash's tract perhaps suggested to his 
disciple the subject.* The only merit that the poem shows is 
a considerable degree of narrative power; its six-line stanzas 
are devoid of imagination and no second couplet sounds so well 
as the following: 

Sanctum Sanctorum, so that place was called, 
Which litus' wondering mind the most appalled." 

At the time that this poem was registered Dekker was at 

^^ Fleay mentions editions of 1598, 1604, 1617, 1618, 1625. 
'" McKerrow, Works of Nash, IV, 214. 



53 

work upon his earliest extant play of the period, " The Sun's 
Darling,"^'^ identified by Gifford with " Phaeton "^^ entered in 
the Diary under his name, January 15, 1598, and in December, 
1600, as altered for presentation at Court. At the end of the 
first act remain a dozen lines of Dekker's characteristic recogni- 
tion of the courtly audience,^'' and possibly " the beauty of 
the garden's Queen "^" may have been a compliment to Eliza- 
beth. But the play appeared many years later, at a different 
Court, altered by a different hand. When "The Sun's Dar- 
ling" was licensed by Herbert on March 3, 1624, Dekker had 
known Ford for at least three years, for " The Witch of 
Edmonton," on which they collaborated, was written in 1621. 
There is therefore no external reason why the two poets 
should not have worked on the masque together; but it is 
practically certain that Ford, with or without the knowledge of 
the older man, made the revisions in the fourth and fifth 
acts that so modify the character of Dekker's graceful progress 
of the seasons, and possibly he altered the first act.-^ To 
Dekker belongs the vivid delight in nature that set him apart 
from all his contemporaries except Shakespere, together with 
the whimsical humor and the songs. The beautiful bird song 
in the second act was once ascribed to Lyly on the slight evi- 
dence furnished by the fact that in an altered form it was 
inserted by Blount in his 1632 edition of six of Lyly's come- 
dies. It has lately been shown that the version in " The Sun's 

" The Sun's Darling : A Moral Masque : As it hath been often presented 
by their Majesties' Servants; at the Cockpit in Drury Lane, with great 
Applause. 

The names of the authors, " John Foard " and " The. Decker," are 
bracketed as " Gent." The date is 1656. 

^ Dyce's revised Gifford's John Ford (1869), I, Introduction, xxiii. 
Gifford's vague " with play of this name " is corrected by Dyce to Phaeton. 

"P., IV, 302. Cf. Old Fortunatus, P., I, 84, and 1 18-1 19. 

^P., IV, 332. 

^^ See Swinburne's essay on John Ford. See also Gifford, Ford's Works 
(revised by Dyce), III, 169. Ford is responsible for the awkward political 
digression and the compliments to Prince Charles, including the speech of 
Winter that borrows from the Epilogue of Every Man out of His Humour. 



54 

Darling" with its two stanzas and cuckoo refrain must have 
been the eariierr^ 

Although the general effect of the play is blurred by Ford's 
changes, the moral of the allegory is to be found in the words 
of Raybright: 

" Now if I fail, let man's experience read me ; 
'Twas Humor, joined with Folly, did mislead me." 

It is not the moral, however, that impresses one : Dekker could 
not help putting the moral intent into his work, but when he 
wrote this masque he was feeling most the freshness and 
sweetness of the outdoor world — the birds and the flowers, 
the gentleness of Spring, the languor of Summer, and Au- 
tumn's bounty; his mood is lyrical and the expression is 
lyrical, whether it takes the form of the eight-syllable line, 
as it occasionally does, or blank verse, or song. 

The characters are not mere abstractions. Raybright, petu- 
lant and spoiled child of the Sun, is not without flashes of 
wisdom : 

" He who is high-born never mounts yon battlement 
Of sparkling stars, unless he be in spirit 
As humble as the child of one that sweats 
To eat the dear-earn'd bread of honest thrift." 

But he pitifully wastes out his year of probation in ceaseless 
search after new pleasures. He soon leaves the garden of 
Spring, with its appealing mistress and her youngest girl, the 
" rosy-finger'd May." She had offered him two kinds of 
music much loved by the writer of the masque : poetry and the 
song of birds. 

^ Greg, The Authorship of the Songs in Lyly's Plays, Mod. Lang. Rev., 
I, no. I, 43-52. He tentatively identifies " the collector, adaptor, and 
writer " of some twenty lyrics in Lyly's plays with Dekker, or Dekker and 
Middleton. Feuillerat agrees with Greg, Mod. Lang. Rev., I, no. 4. 
Fleay is inclined to think that all the other songs not in Lyly's original 
text were written by Dekker, Bullen further points out, in his edition of 
Middleton, IH, 358, note, that the song, " O for a bowl of fat Canary " at 
the end of A Mad World, my Masters, is also found in Alexander and 
Campaspe, and adds " Perhaps neither Middleton nor Lyly wrote it." The 
song is a good song of its kind, and Dekker wrote that kind very well 
indeed. 



and 



55 

" The selfsame Bay tree into which was turn'd 
Peneian Daphne, I have still kept green ; 
That tree shall now be thine ; about it sit 
All the old poets with fresh laurel crowned, 
Singing in verse the praise of chastity ; 
Hither when thou shalt come, they all shall rise. 
Sweet cantos of thy love and mine to sing, 
And invoke none but thee as Delian King;"^ 

" Not a lark that calls 
The morning up shall build on any turf 
But she shall be thy tenant, call thee Lord, 
And for her rent pay thee in change of songs." 

After Spring has fainted and died, Raybright remembers her 
princely mind and her temperance: 

" Thou wouldst not waste 
The weight of a sad violet in excess." 

His new mistress, Humor, a beautiful changeable lady, faith- 
ful, in her fashion, to Raybright and to nothing else, has also 
an eloquent tongue: 

" I'll raise, by art, out of base earth, a palace, 
Whither thyself, waving a crystal stream. 
Shall call together the most glorious spirits 
Of all the kings that have been in the world. 
And they shall come only to feast with thee." 

Humor's squire Folly is the clown of the play; he is some- 
times genuinely amusing and sometimes he dallies with the 
innuendo that the age permitted ; he is not without ingratiating 
qualities ; " Carbonado me, bastinado me, strapado me, hang 
me, I'll not stir; poor Folly, honest Folly, jocundary Folly, 
forsake your Lordship ! "-* To add further to the humor, 
Dekker introduces a characteristic group of foreigners, — a 
French tailor, an Italian dancer, a Spanish comfit-maker. 
Among other masque elements are eight songs, a morris dance 
by the " country gray," other dances, an " echo of cornets," 
and the repeated apparition of the Sun^^ "above." Next to 

^ This is the picture that Dekker later developed in A Knight's Conjuring. 

-* Cf. with Earnaby Bunch. 

*" Attired in a " white satin doublet." Greg, Diary, I, 83. 



56 

the bird song, the best is that of the " country-fellows," with 
its pleasant and spirited medley of girls and flowers, country 
sights and sounds, and the joys of hunting and hawking. Cer- 
tainly, though London-born, Dekker knew and loved the 
country. Another song — a drinking song — contains the char- 
actertistic lines: 

" Money is trash, and he that will spend it, 
Let him drink merrily. Fortune will send it."^ 

But after all it is the sweetness and spontaneity of the 
verse that leaves the strongest impression upon the reader. 
The air grows hot and the Sun calls out : 

" Ho Eolus, 
Unlock the jail and lend a wind or two 
To fan my girl the Summer." 

Cries Raybright after a kiss: 

" The rose-lipped dawning 
Is not so melting, so delicious ; 
Turn me into a bird that I may sit 
Still singing in such boughs." 

Dekker's next extant play is first mentioned on the fifteenth 
of July, when he was paid three pounds to " buy " a book 
called " The Gentle Craft."^^ It was acted before the Queen 
on New Year's day, 1600, and was printed anonymously the 
same year under the title, " The Shoemaker's Holiday or The 
Gentle Craft, with the humorous life of Simon Eyre, shoe- 
maker and Lord Mayor of London." It was provided with a 
prologue for the Queen and an appropriate little dedication 
to " all good fellows. Professors of the Gentle Craft."^^ 
"Nothing is purposed but mirth," afiirms Dekker; "mirth 

^ Both songs are given in Schelling's Seventeenth Century Lyrics. 

^ Fleay's extraordinary doubt of Dekker's authorship needs no comment ; 
and the hypothesis that Robert Wilson, the actor, shared the authorship 
rests upon worthless evidence ; for presentation of that theory, see Intro- 
duction to The Shoemakers' Holiday, edited by Warnke and Proescholdt, 
Halle, 1886. The list of actors furnished by " Dramaticus " (Shak. Sac. 
Papers, IV, no) is doubtless, as Fleay says, a forgery. 

=^ In this form of dedication, Dekker, and later Rowley, follow their 
source Deloney : " To all the good yeomen of the gentle craft." 



57 

lengtheneth long life, which, with all other blessings I heartily 
wish you." The play was thrice reprinted during the author's 
lifetime.'^ 

The source of " The Shoemaker's Holiday " is Thomas 
Deloney's " Gentle Craft,"^" a lively and humorous collection 
of stories about shoemakers, full of details about London and 
bourgeois life and very specific in matters of dress, tools, and 
customs.^^ From the third tale in the first part Dekker took 
his main plot, the story of a shoemaker rising through the 
purchase of the cargo of a vessel to wealth and station until 
he finally became Lord Mayor of London; with this plot he 
combined a romantic love story, borrowing the idea of dis- 
guising a noble lover as a shoemaker from Deloney's second 
tale; and to these threads he added a tender little drama of his 
own, relating the troubles of a young wife when her shoe- 
maker husband is forced to go to the wars. Some minor de- 
tails he also borrowed from Deloney : the trouble at the church 
door when Jane and Hammon are to be married, and, espe- 
cially, the presence of a Dutchman among Simon Eyre's shoe- 
makers.^- 

But Dekker's combinations and insertions amount to crea- 
tion. This is especially true of his characterization, for which 
he received no hint in his source except in the case of Dame 
Margery. Simon Eyre, the hearty, the genial, overflowing 
with " mad " uproarious talk,^^ with common sense and with 

^ There seems to be no reason for dating the play earlier than its entry 
in the Diary. Fleay's date, 1597, has nothing to support it. Deloney's 
Gentle Craft, though entered S. R. October 19, 1597, does not seem to 
have been printed before 1598. 

^^ Edited by A. F, Lange, Palaestra, xviii. 

*" See Cam. Hist. Eng. Lit., Ill, 422, for Deloney's contribution to the 
drama by way of stories and ballads. William Rowley's Shoemaker's a 
Gentleman derives its plot from The Gentle Craft. 

^ For specific borrowings, see notes in Lange's edition of The Gentle 
Craft. 

^ Mr. E. E. Stoll has an article in Modern Language Notes, v. 21, called 
" The Influence of Jonson on Dekker," in which he puts forward the theory 
that Eyre's speech is derived from Juniper's in The Case is Altered. It is 
far less convincing than his alternative suggestion that the few catch-words 
and phrases used in common by the two characters belong to " the hilarious 
cant of the day." 



58 

kindness, possessed of innocent vanities and an honest heart, 
is surely a memorable personage in English comedy, one more- 
over that does not need to be bolstered up with evil talk or 
evil surroundings. He is the first of Dekker's "old" men, 
"green" because they have led good lives; "merry" because 
they are not in need of repentance. Dekker's too is Jane, with 
the little touch of spirit that he likes to give to his gentlest 
women, for when "checkt" by Dame Margery, "away she 
flung," to appear next in her " sempster's " shop, adored far 
off by the love-lorn Hammon, likewise Dekker's creation, a 
figure not without pathos — or humor either — as he eyes in 
vain "her pretty hand," "her happy work," and muses what 
women see in other men that he " still wants." " The Shoe- 
maker's Holiday " is indeed the first play that exhibits not only 
Dekker's great powers of characterization but also his insight 
into motive, his sincere and healthy outlook upon life, result- 
ing in realism if you like, but the sort of realism that selects 
the normal and the human, not the degraded and the beastly ; 
and he had the rare artistic ability to make the normal and 
the human as lovable in a play as they are in real life. How 
firmly the characters are handled, how solidly their feet rest 
upon the ground, like those of Millet's peasants, and how 
swift, direct, naive at times, is their utterance! Sane, sweet, 
and democratic was the mind that could so view life and so 
present it ; without satire, for it is only with humor that Dame 
Margery, Sybil, Firk, Eyre himself, are conceived; without 
illegitimate appeal to the gallery, for Lacy's Dutch, for 
example, is used with restraint and good effect. In " The , 
Shoemaker's Holiday " we have the most attractive picture of 
citizen life presented on the Elizabethan stage, and perhaps 
it is the truest. If for Dekker, the verse lacks imaginative 
charm, it is efficient verse, and we have, as a substitute for 
poetic beauty the intoxicating quality of the prose, its abundant 
vitality, spontaneity and its almost lyrical rhythm, so perfectly 
suited to the invincible gayety of mood in which the play was 
planned and carried out. In keeping with the mood too are 
the hearty little lyrics, a love song and a capital drinking 
round, the latter beginning suggestively and appropriately: 



59 

" Cold's the wind, and wet's the rain, 
Saint Hugh be our good speed : 
111 is the weather that bringeth no gain. 
Nor helps good hearts in need." 

Although the next extant play that shows Dekker's hand 
cannot as a whole be compared with " The Shoemaker's Holi- 
day," it has a special interest, partly because it is a play of 
great though interrupted charm and partly because it shows 
more than one way in which Dekker collaborated. For 
" Patient Grissill," th^ three authors apparently received the 
large sum of ten guineas, beginning with an undated payment 
to Chettle alone between October i6 and November i, 1599, 
and closing with the payment of five shillingsto Dekker and 
Haughton respectively on December 28 and 29,^* The large 
payments were made to all three. It was acted in January, 1600, 
when Henslowe mentions buying " a grey gown " for Grissill ; 
and registered to print on March 28, 1600, but not published 
until 1603. *■ The main plot of this romantic tragicomedy deals 
with the familiar legend of Griselda^^ with the addition of 
two new figures, her brother Laureo and a family servant, 
Babulo. To this, as a relief, is joined the first sub-plot, a 
variety of the shrew story, relating the strife for mastery be- 
tween a Welsh knight and his bride and conqueror, a Welsh 
widow, cousin of the Marquis. The scene in which Sir Owen 
tears up his wife's rebato may have had its inspiration in the 
behavior of Petruchio anent his wifes cap and gown.^^ The 
second and slighter sub-plot centres about Julia, the sister of 
the Marquis — remotely if at all suggested by Shakespere's 
Beatrice^^ — ^who decides that it is a pleasanter task to lead 

** The relatively large payment is against a theory put forward by Pro- 
fessor W. Bang, Dekker-Studien, Englische Studien, 28, 208-213, to the 
effect that the main plot represents an old play written by Chettle alone 
some six years earlier. 

^ For the probable sources, see G. Hiibsch's Introduction to his critical 
edition of the play, Erlanger Beitrdge, band 15. See also F. von Westen- 
holz's Die Griseldis-Sage (Heidelberg), 86-116. To John Phillip's Play of 
Patient Grissell, published in the Malone Soc. Reprints, the play in ques- 
tion owes nothing. 

*" Westenholz speaks of a general obligation to The Taming of the 
Shrew, p. 89. 

*^ See Westenholz, 104. 



60 

apes in hell than to be a wife on earth and there endure hell, 
a natural conclusion when one considers the conduct of her 
nearest relation. 

There is general agreement that to Chettle belongs the 
greater part of the story of Grissill, to Haughton that of Julia, 
and to Dekker the scenes in which Babulo and Laureo figure. 
There should be no doubt that the whole story of Gwenthyan 
and Sir Owen was written by Dekker f^ he had a considerable 
liking for Welsh, introducing another " British knight " into 
" Satiromastix " and another into " Northward Ho " ; and in 
each case handling easily the dialect of plausible broken Eng- 
lish sprinkled with Keltic words and delighting in the oppor- 
tunity for punning and other word-play. It is an entertaining 
farce that is enacted with so much unconscious humor by the 
solemn " Prittish " pair. Especially well maintained is the atti- 
tude of the lady, who, without any sense of the unusual, ad- 
ministers to her husband on a small scale the treatment meted 
out to Grissill on a large: "As her cousin has tried Grisill, 
so Gwenthyan has Sir Owen." On his side, Sir Owen closes 
the strife with equal complacency, reflecting that if he had 
not been patient, his lady had not been " pridled." 

Without any desire to take from Chettle credit for the 
scenes in which Grissill appears, it should be added that Dekker 
touched them here and there, especially when she shows flicker- 
ing signs of sense alien to the monstrous mush of concession 
long admired by the credulous. When, for example, her 
children are finally taken from her, she bitterly cries out in 
Dekkeresque language : 

" I must, Oh God ! I must : must is for kings, 
And low obedience for low underlings."^' 

She speaks of herself as loaded with wrongs,^" and her peculiar 

^ Perhaps there is no doubter except Fleay, who gives the Welsh to 
Chettle. One incident in the Sir Owen-Gwenthyan plot, that in which the 
latter refuses to feed her husband's guests, Dekker had found in the French 
satire that he translated in 1603. He used it again in / Honest Whore, as 
observed by Professor Bang. 

^ G., V, 194. Nearly the same words are used by Celestine in Satiro- 
mastix, P., I, 247. This is noted by Professor Bang. 

*»G., V, 179. 



61 

virtue wears very thin when she turns to or from the Marquis 
with the sarcastic remarks : 

" Your patience I commend that can abide 
To hear a flatterer speak, yet never chide."*' 

Undeniably Dekker's throughout is the most lovable char- 
acter in the play — Babulo, family servant, basket-maker, 
" fool " ; fun-making, pun-making ; fiercely loyal to Grissill, 
"knocking" the Marquis when he tries to kiss her, and when 
the same hero twits his wife with the russet gown she used 
to wear, crying out, " Grissill was as pretty a Grissill in the 
one as in the other"; always delightful whether he sings a 
nursery catch to one of his mistress's babies, or plays with 
his sword and discourses Lylian language to his boy, his 
"courtier in decimo sexto," or urges honest work upon the 
discontented Laureo, or bestows upon the Marquis's servant 
his real opinion of court life: 

" Good Furio, vanish ; we have no appetite, tell your Master. Clowns 
are not for the Court ; we'll keep Court ourselves, for what do Courtiers 
but we do the like : you eat good cheer and we eat good bread and cheese : 
you drink wine and we strong beer : at night you are as hungry slaves as you 
were at noon ; why, so are we : you go to bed, you can but sleep, why and 
so do we ; in the morning you rise about eleven of the clock, why there we 
are your betters, for we are going before you ; you wear silks, and we 
sheep skins ; innocence carries it away in the world to come ; and there- 
fore vanish, good Furio, torment us not, my sweet Furio."*" 

There is a universal appeal in his account of the pains of 
getting up early : 

" Old Master, here's a morning able to make us work both tooth and 
nail, (marry, then, we must have victuals). The sun hath played bo-peep 
in the element any time these two hours, as I do some mornings when 
you call : ' What, Babulo,' say you : ' Here, Master,' say I ; and then this 
eye opens, yet dun is the mouse, lie still : ' What, Babulo,' says Grissill : 
' anon,' say I, and then this eye looks up, yet down I snug again : ' What, 
Babulo/ say you again, and then I start up, and see the sun, and then 
sneeze, and then shake mine ears, and then rise, and then get my break- 
fast, and then fall to work, and then wash my hands, and by this time I 
am ready." 

"G., V, 154. 

**G., V, 216. Cp. Shadow's dispraise of travel. Old Fortunatus, P., I, 126. 



62 

But quotations give a small idea of this dear cousin of 
Shadow, more of the earth indeed, but more lovable. He is 
an important member of the attractive group before Laureo 
and the Marquis invade it — humble, hard-working, and sing- 
ing their song of sweet content and golden slumbers, than 
which there is no lovelier lyric on the bright pages of Eliza- 
bethan song books. Laureo, the poor scholar, is also Dekker's 
creation,^^ but he is treated with no particular sympathy: 
Babulo scoffs at his idleness, advises him to leave Latin and 
fall to basket-making, and shrewdly inquires how the nine 
Muses are doing — ^pride, covetousness, envy, and the rest. 
Like Babulo, he resents the cruelty of the " trial," but at the 
end, in words that Dekker must have penned, he tamely joins 
the admiring chorus that surround the Marquis. 

To Dekker have also been ascribed the scenes^* in which the 
fantastic dandy Emulo has a part, especially that in which he 
employs a " gallimaufry of language " to describe his duel with 
Sir Owen. It has long been noticed that he bears a close 
resemblance to Fastidious Brisk in Jonson's " Every Man out 
of his Humour,"*^ and it is thought that both men utilized sepa- 
rately an actual event and a well-known character.** Dekker, 
however, was first in the field, and uses the material with 
greater dramatic effectiveness;*'' and there remains the possi- 
bility that Jonson may have borrowed the incidents and char- 
acters, and thus given occasion to the unexplained taunt in 

** The following passage has been thought to resemble Dekker : 

" Such are our bankrouts and our fugitives, 
Scarce having one good leg or one good limb. 
Outrun their creditors and those they wrong." (p. 214.) 

See also Laureo's praise of court life, p. 191, which has points of resem- 
blance with that of Fortunatus, P., I, 118. 

**G., V, 136-141, 164-168. 

*°Gifford's Jonson (1904), vol. I, Act IV, sc. i, pp. 1 19-120. Cf. also the 
description and talk of Clove, p. 97, and 99, with Dekker's " brisk spangle- 
baby," G., V, 132-133. Such ignorant pretensions seem to have been com- 
mon enough. See The Gull's Hornbook, G., II, 265. Asinius Bubo in 
Satiromastix belongs to the same type. 

"On this subject, see R. A. Small, Stage-Quarrel, 42-43. He follows 
Fleay and Penniman. 

" See Dekker-Studien, 214. 



63 

" Satiromastix " : "Demetrius [Dekker] shall write a scene or 
two in one of thy strong garlic comedies, and thou shalt take 
the guilt of conscience for it and swear 'tis thine own, old lad, 
'tis thine own."** 

By 1600, when Dekker was perhaps twenty-eight years old, 
he was thinking, so far as we know, in terms of imaginative 
idealism, or of tender or merry realism ; he saw chiefly not the 
sordid side of poverty or the wicked potentialities in human 
nature, but love and loyalty of every kind, that which exists 
between servant and master as well as that between lover and 
lass, and the pleasant comradeship among men doing the same 
sort of work, with their swift readiness to help one another. 
In all these plays, his wit and humor have their way. Yet to a 
date shortly following the presentation of " Patient Grissill," 
Fleay and Swinburne would assign that orgy of blood and evil 
passion known as " Lust's Dominion," identifying it with " The 
Spanish Moor's Tragedy," upon which Dekker collaborated 
with Day and Haughton early in 1600. The play belongs to 
the early type exemplified by " The Jew of Malta " and " Titus 
Andronicus."*® It is not only wholly unlike the known work 
of Dekker, but it is also for the most part unlike that of his 
collaborators : Haughton, whose one extant play written alone 
is " Englishmen for my Money," a sort of comedy of tricks ; 
and Day, whose satirical-romantic gift is almost as far removed 
from the drama of blood, but who might conceivably have added 
the curious Oberon scenes. The Queen and Eleazer were con- 
ceived by a more " robust " mind than that of Dekker, who 
never drew either a convincing villain or a bad woman of im- 
posing presence, or told in his plays a story of successful lust. 
Nor can I see any evidence in characterization or in phrasing 
that he retouched this drama, least of all the opening scene, 
which Swinburne so positively claims for him. 

" P., I, 201. 

The theory that Jonson was an unmentioned fourth collaborator on 
Patient Grissill creates more difficulties than it solves. For that theory, see 
Dekker-Studien, 213-214. 

*^ Fleay acknowledges " an undercurrent of pre-Shakesperian work." See 
art. Haughton. Neither Ward nor Bullen thinks Dekker had a hand in 
this play. 



CHAPTER V 

The Quarrel with Jonson ; the Close of the Henslowe 
Period, i 601-1602 

The only play by Dekker mentioned in the " Diary " for 
1601 is " King Sebastian of Portugal," a lost topical play on a 
popular subject, collaborated with Chettle and paid for in April 
and May. It seems possible that even then or during the 
earlier empty months of that year he was engaged upon a 
tragedy of much promise intended for Henslowe and the Ad- 
miral's men. While it was still unfinished, however, circum- 
stances arose that compelled him to throw it aside and bend all 
his energies to a peculiarly exacting form of personal satire. 
As the satire by itself was not long enough to constitute a play, 
he united it to the part of the tragedy he had already written,^ 
and we have the result in the medley known as " Satiromastix."^ 
As the line between the tragical and satirical portions is suffi- 
ciently clear, it will be simpler to discuss them separately. 

The subject of the unfinished tragedy was the killing of 
William Rufus by Wat Tirrell, but although it therefore falls 
loosely within the category of revenge tragedies popular be- 
tween 1598 and 1602, it was apparently to have been developed 
without the aid of their more sensational features. It opens 
gracefully enough with two gentlewomen strewing, upon the 
stony way to church, flowers " with their yellow-sunk eyes," 
and discoursing in a rather Lylian strain. This is followed 
by other preparations for the wedding, amidst which comes to 
the front the comic sub-plot concerned with the three suitors — 
one of them a Welshman — of Mistress Miniver, an ignorant, 

^ Swinburne first put forward the theory that the satire on Jonson was 
added to an incomplete tragedy that Dekker had on hand; Small, in his 
Stage Quarrel, developed it. 

- Satiro-mastix or the Untrussing of the Humorous Poet. As it hath bin 
presented publikely by the Right Honorable, the Lord Chamberlaine, his 
Servants ; and privately by the Children of Paitles, 1602. 

64 



65 

naive widow. Afterwards there is music, dancing to "the soft 
wind of whispering silks," broken snatches of talk between the 
King and Celestine, and finally the sinister interview in which 
the King's repeated *' Thou dar'st not, Wat," calls out the 
bridegroom's foolish oath that is to bring on the catastrophe. 
After more of the comedy, including the orations in favor of 
long hair and of baldness, the latter spoken in a garden, and 
a brief troubled consultation between bride, groom, and father, 
comes the noble scene in which Celestine gladly drinks the 
poisoned wine prepared by her father. It is full of tragic 
feeling and poignant phrasing. As Sir Quintilian presents the 
cup, he cries : 

" O my son, 
I am her father ; every tear I shed 
Is threescore ten year old." 

And Terrill : 

"Oh, 
That very name of poison, poisons me ; 
Thou Winter of a man, thou walking grave. 
Whose life is like a dying taper, how 
Canst thou define a lover's laboring thoughts? 
What scent hast thou but death ? What taste but earth ? 
The breath that purls from thee is like the steam 
Of a new open'd vault : I know thy drift, 
Because thou art travelling to the land of graves, 
Thou covetst company, and hither bringst 
A health of poison to pledge death : a poison 
For this sweet spring : this element is mine, 
This is the air I breathe : corrupt it not ; 
This heaven is mine, I bought it with my soul 
Of Him that sells a heaven to buy a soul." 

But the end of the scene as it now stands is an anticlimax 
inserted to prepare us for Celestine's return to life, made nec- 
essary by the intention of subordinating the tragical scenes to 
the satirical additions, or, to use Dekker's apologetic words, 

" to wed a comical event 
To pre-supposed tragic argument." 

It was Ben Jonson who caused the ruin of this tragedy. 
About i6oa-i6oi he was suffering from one of the most malig- 

6 



66 

nant attacks of egotism recorded in literature, and he took his 
own symptoms so seriously as to mislead most critics down to 
the present century ; he did not so mislead his contemporaries. 
During its earlier stages the quarreP between Jonson and his 
fellow dramatists had involved Anthony Munday, but by 1600 ' 
it had narrowed down to a duel between Jonson and Marston, 
in which the honors and the acridities were pretty evenly di- 
vided. With both men Dekker had been on friendly terms; 
as late as September, 1599, he was collaborating with the 
former and others — possibly Marston among them^ — on 
" Robert II, King of Scotland," and throughout the period he 
was intimate with the latter. This intimacy was the chief, per- 
haps the only reason why about February or March he was 
dragged into the affair by Jonson in " Cynthia's Revels." In 
that inhumanly tedious play, he is chiefly ridiculed as Anaides, 
the humble friend of Hedon or Marston ; he is poor, he knows 
the classics only superficially, yet accuses Crites or Jonson of 
plagiarizing from them, and is, in general, " a light arrogating 
puff" rhymingly bracketed with Marston as "impudent and 
ignorant enough."^ 

To this attack Dekker showed no signs of replying, but Jon- 
son, by his arrogance and his onslaughts upon other poets, had 
roused the wrath of a more numerous foe, and the Chamber- 
lain's men, according to Jonson's own account,® asked Dekker to 
reply, or, to use his enemy's words, " hired him to abuse Horace 
[Jonson] and bring him in, in a play." Even then, he showed 
so little eagerness for battle that he was engaged upon his 
tragedy, when, probably in June, Jonson concentrated his 
powers of satire in " The Poetaster," directed primarily towards 

*In discussing this subject I have drawn largely from R. A. Small's Stage- 
Quarrel between Ben Jonson and the So-called Poetasters, especially pp. 
118— 132 and 199—200. For another point of view, see J. H. Penniman's 
War of the Theaters, Boston, 1897. 

* See Small, 90-92. 

"As Small points out, Dekker himself accepts this interpretation of 
Anaides and Hedon. See P., I, 195, where Horace quotes "The one a 
light voluptious reveler," etc. 

" Jonson's use of the word " hire " has led the docile critic to speak of 
Dekker as " a hired mercenary," as if Dekker were the only dramatist who 
wrote in part to make a living. 



67 

the glory of Ben Jonson, secondarily against Marston and 
Marston's friend, and incidentally against players, lawyers, 
courtiers, citizens and citizens' wives. As he knew that Dekker 
was going to write a play against him he cleverly endeavored 
to discredit in advance that expected satire by representing his 
opponent as worthy of nothing but contempt : " O, sir, his 
doublet's a little decayed ; he is otherwise a very simple honest 
fellow, sir, one Demetrius, a dresser of plays about the town 
here,"'' — a dresser or decker of plays: perhaps at this point 
Jonson was actuated less by contempt than by the desire to 
make a pun. However that may be, he puts into the mouth 
of Demetrius a poem mean in thought and doggerel in form f 
represents him as spiteful and given to slander,^ and, as in 
" Cynthia's Revels," guilty of criticising Jonson's free use of 
the classics although he does not thoroughly understand them 
himself;^" finally, when brought to the bar he is made to take 
an oath not to slander Jonson or any other superior, and is 
forced to put on the cap and gown of a fool, to wear them 
" in every fair and generous assembly," and to think himself 
only what the cap and gown show him to be.^^ Together with 
Marston he is also accused of calumniating and envying Jon- 
son, and of " taxing him falsely of self-love, arrogancy, impu- 
dence, railing, filching by translation, etc."^- — charges specific- 
ally made to forestall the expected satire. 

Whether roused by his own indignation, or, as seems more 
likely, by the insistency of Marston or the Chamberlain's men, 
among whom was Shakespere,^^ Dekker apparently set to work 
upon his reply as soon as " The Poetaster " appeared. As he 
ridicules Jonson for requiring fifteen weeks for the comple- 
tion of his play — "What, will he be fifteen weeks about this 

''Poet, III, I, p. 234. This reference and the following are to Gifford's 
edition, 1904. 

^ Idem, V, I, pp. 257-258. 

^ Idem, III, I, p. 235. 

^'' Idetn, IV, I, p. 239; V, 1, p. 257. 

^Idem, V, I, pp. 255, 258, 261-262. 

^Idem, p. 255. 

" Shakespere's part in the quarrel mentioned in II Return from Parnassus 
has not been satisfactorily explained ; perhaps he did nothing more than 
join in the invitation to Dekker. 



68 

cockatrice's egg too ? "" — he presumably finished his answer in 
a shorter time : about September, thinks Fleay ; August or Sep- 
tember, writes Small/^ Pressed for time, or unable or un- 
willing to make an entire play of the satire he joined it to his 
unfinished tragedy. The connection with the main plot is made 
by representing Horace or Jonson as writing a nuptial ode for 
Celestine and Terrill, and, at the close, by making William 
Rufus preside over the trial and punishment of Horace, just 
as Caesar Augustus had presided over the trial and punishment 
of Crispinus and Demetrius.^® The satire is more closely con- 
nected with the sub-plot, for Captain Tucca becomes a fourth 
wooer of Mistress Miniver and finally carries off the prize. 
The medley was acted, as the title tells us, at the Globe by the 
Chamberlain's men, in private by the Children of Paul's. It 
was registered to print November ii, and was published the 
next year, with an incomplete list of characters and some 
errata^^ styled by Dekker " a comedy of errors." 

For the task of putting down Jonson, Dekker had many 
qualifications. In his own field of genial comedy he was as 
great as Jonson in his field of the comedy of humors, and it 
must have been recognized that he was too kindly as well as 
too wise to attempt to return scorn for scorn and that he might 
therefore be trusted to employ against arrogance the only 
effective weapon, which is laughter. Again, Dekker knew 
his subject, and while there is no well-defined reason for 
thinking that the collaboration with Jonson left any soreness 
on either side, there must have been, in the inevitable discus- 

" Satiromastix, P., I, 202. 

'" Small's date depends upon his dating of Jonson's plays : he would assign 
Cynthia's Revels to February or March, 1601, because he thinks that Actaeon 
represents Essex, who was executed February 25, 1601, and because that 
date would agree with Jonson's known habit of producing a play a year. 
But The Poetaster was written in fifteen weeks, for Dekker says so ; and 
was therefore produced about June. 

In the Introduction to his edition of Satiromastix Dr. Hans Scherer, who 
in general follows Small, incorporates some suggestions for a later date 
which are not convincing. 

^^ To Horace is also given a little oration in honor of baldness originally 
intended for some other character. 

" Found in the notes in Pearson's edition, restored to their proper place 
in Dr. Scherer's. 



69 

sion and criticism of each other's work when they came to 
joining scenes and to harmonizing characters, abundant oppor- 
tunity for temperament to rub against temperament. Jonson, 
in any case, could have been no easy partner, though it must 
be added that, as far as the evidence goes, he seems to have 
collaborated " more " with Dekker than with any one else.^* 
Since one expected charge in particular, that of plagiarism and 
of " filching by translation," rankled so deeply in Jonson's mind 
and since Dekker actually does emphasize that charge,^^ prob- 
ably it had some basis in fact, not necessarily in anything 
written for the stage but in the give-and-take of men engaged 
in "the same trade of poetry/' as Dekker reproachfully puts 
it. The latter may, for example, have said to his scholarly 
collaborator, "You get that out of Horace," or he may con- 
ceivably have written a scene or two that went under Jonson's 
name alone. But if that was the case, it is very certain that 
in those days of loose literary ownership, neither gave the 
matter a second thought until open war forced petty details 
into misleading prominence. 

InDekker's dedication, "To the World," prefixed to "Satiro- 
mastix," he states his point of view in respect to " that terrible 
Poetomachia lately commenced between Horace the Second 
and a band of lean-witted poetasters." " Horace," he explains, 
"questionless made himself believe that his Burgonian wit 
might desperately challenge all comers ; and tliat none durst 
take up the foils against him : It's likely if he had not so be- 
lieved, he had not been so deceived, for he was answered at 
his own weapon."-" 

In answering the common enemy at his own weapon, Dekker 
took over from "The Poetaster" the names that Jonson had 
used for himself and his two victims — Horace, Crispinus, and 

" With Chettle too he twice collaborated, but Dekker was his only sole 
collaborator in any play. 

^' He makes it three times at least : in the passage quoted on p. 63 ; in 
the application of the epithet " Lucian " (P., I, 235) to Jonson, thus calling 
attention to the fact that the latter had borrowed from Lucian the manner 
of Marston's punishment in The Poetaster; in the passage (261-2) in 
which Jonson is made to swear " not to bombast out a new play with the 
old linings of jests stolen from the Temple's Revels." 

»P., I, 181. 



70 

Demetrius, and he likewise appropriated the name of Captain 
Tucca, but transformed him from a noisy coward and time- 
server into a partisan of the two poetasters, endowed with an 
extraordinary gift for blustering invective and a wide knowl- 
edge of ballads and plays — a telling stage figure. Into his 
mouth Dekker put nearly all the rougher part of the satire and 
the personal retort. When criticised for copying Jonson's 
creation, he replied that Jonson had first copied "honest Cap- 
tain Hannam " ; " neither was it much improper to set the 
same dog upon Horace whom Horace had set to worry others."^^ 
He then added to the group Asinius Bubo, satellite of Horace, 
toady and ignoramus, possibly a portrait drawn from life but 
representing a common type. The correspondence of Asinius 
and Horace to Faber and Lampatho in " What You Will " by 
Marston has been attributed to the latter's helping hand, and 
so have the dash and vigor of the whole Horace plot.^^ There 
can be no doubt that he had some share in the play, for Cap- 
tain Tucca's clever little epilogue^^ speaks of " my poetasters " 
and Jonson in his " Apologetical Dialogue" uses the plural 
number, but it seems to have been confined to suggestion, for 
the style is Dekker's. 

The reader fresh from Jonson's satires, in which his aston- 
ishing arrogance claims for himself all the virtues, poetic and 
manly, must be struck most of all by the modesty and good- 
nature of Dekker's reply. Level-headed throughout, he keeps 
himself entirely in the background, and though he allows his 
pen to pay a brief compliment to Crispinus^* and naturally 
makes him the judge over Horace at the end, he does not 
permit even that friend to become prominent. Twice, how- 
ever, in his own person, he speaks out his real indignation, the 
first time as follows : 

" Out of our loves we come, 
And not revenge, but if you strike us still, 
We must defend our reputations : 
Our pens shall like our swords be always sheath'd, 

^ To the World, P., I, 182. 

^ Small, 122. 

=»P., I, 26S-266. 

^ P., I, 256. " We make him thine," etc. 



71 

Unless too much provokt ; Horace, if then 
They draw blood of you, blame us not, we are men : 
Come, let thy Muse bear up a smoother sail, 
'Tis the easiest and the basest art to rail."^ 

The second quotation is a reply to Jonson's common accusation 
of envy: 

" Good Horace, no ; my cheeks do blush for thine. 
As often as thou speak'st so ; where one true 
And nobly-vertuous spirit, for thy best part 
Loves thee, I wish one ten, even from my heart. 
I make account I put up as deep share 
In any good man's love which thy worth earns 
As thou thyself; we envy not to see 
Thy friends with bays to crown thy poesy. 
No, here the gall lies, we that know what stuff 
Thy very heart is made of ; know the stalk 
On which thy learning grows, and can give life 
To thy (once dying) baseness ; yet must we 
Dance antics on your paper. 



This makes us angry, but not envious ; 

No ; were thy warpt soul put in a new mould, 

I'd wear thee as a jewel set in gold."^ 

Contrary to the usual opinion, Dekker treats Jonson the 
dramatist with great moderation, not only praising his poetry 
but granting that his satire had sometimes drawn blood with 
justice.^^ In the amusing little scene^^ that opens the play in 
which Horace is represented in the agonies of composition and 
calling upon the Muses for aid as he fumbles for the right 
word and the right rhyme, the resulting ode, in spite of the 
absurdity of the total effect, is not a mere parody of Jonson's 
drinking song^^ but is possessed of lyrical movement and some 
grace of expression. The twice-repeated " O me thy Priest 
inspire" has its origin in Jonson's description of himself as 

'^ Idem, 198-199. 

^ Idem, 244-5. 

^ " He whose pen 

Draws both corrupt and clear blood," etc, p. 263. 

="?., 191. 

'^ Poetaster, III, i, 223. 



72 

" poet and priest to the Muses.^" As the purpose of the poet- 
asters was to satirize the arch-satirist, the punishment meted 
out to him is not improper ; he is indeed threatened with tossing 
in the blanket, for Jonson's own hint'^ to that effect could 
hardly be neglected, but the threat is not really carried out,®^ 
and Horace's penalty consists in being compelled to look upon 
his own picture and that of the true Horace placed side by side, 
in having his satyr's coat that he had assumed from pride and 
scorn, not " allegiance to bright virtue," pulled over his head, 
in feeling his " stinging wit " crowned with " stingling net- 
tles " ; and in his finally being made to promise good behavior 
for the future. 

For the rest, the humor of " S'atiromastix," and the sting too, 
lies in the fact that the play is full of echoes and reverberations 
from " Cynthia's Revels " and " The Poetaster "^^ — so full in- 
deed that any critic of Dekker's method in any specific case 
should feel the necessity of turning back to Jonson for the 
occasion.^* There are hits at Jonson's compliments to himself, 
his praise of his own poetry and his own valor, his assumption 
of shrinking innocence, as when he explains that he had never 

^ Idem, V, I, 255. 

^Cynthia's Revels, III, 2, 165. Anaides-Dekker says of Crites-Jonson, 
" I'll send for him to my lodging and have him blanketed when thou wilt, 
man." 

^ This is not the usual opinion, but it should be noticed that when near 
the end of the scene the women are called upon for a "verdict" (p. 245) 
they all cry, " Blanket," a verdict that would have no point if it had already 
been fulfilled ; at that moment Sir Vaughan interposes with " Hold, I pray, 
hold," and offers his " fine device " of carrying Horace's " terrible person " 
to Court — a plan that is actually and immediately carried out. The " one 
lash more " (p. 244) that possibly to Gifford (Poetaster, 218, note) sug- 
gested the use of the bastinado seems rather to refer to the verbal chastise- 
ment of Captain Tucca. 

^ Many of these echoes, replies, and correspondences are noted by Small, 
Penniman, H. S. Mallory, in the notes appended to his edition of Poetaster 
(Yale Studies, 1905), and by Dr. Scherer in the annotated Satiromastix. 

®* For example, the apparently weak scene, p. 242, in which Captain 
Tucca stabs at Horace, who cries out, " Ah gentlemen, I am slain ; oh 
slave, art hired to murder me ? " may have had a three-fold origin : in 
Jonson's boasting of his courage, in his representing Crispinus-Marston as 
suffering from fear at the court of Caesar, and in his " We have hired 
him, etc." 



73 

been known to " wrong or tax a friend," and his assertion that 
he wrote for learned ears alone. At one end of the scale he is 
made to complain that his enemies misinterpreted him even 
while he was dipping his pen in " distilled roses," at the other, 
to express his hatred of the habit of uttering solecisms, 

" To do which I'd as soon speak plasphemy."^ 

To Jonson's attacks upon the personal peculiarities of Mars- 
ton, Dekker replied in kind, not sparing details of face, figure, 
dress, manners, and history, or even a hint at his foe's religion 
— a species of retort for which he felt it necessary to apolo- 
gize when he printed the play. He does not, however, attack 
Jonson's moral character, although it would seem from a 
speech put into the mouth of Crispinus^^ that the latter at 
least had thus been attacked in Jonson's satires. 

In general, when we leave out of consideration the inco- 
herence and incongruity resulting from the union of tragedy 
and comedy, Dekker's satire must be recognized as essentially 
better art, for it depends for its effect upon recognized facts 
about the life and character of Jonson, while the latter made 
the unpardonable literary blunder of taxing his victims with 
faults for the most part imaginary, employing so little truth 
of detail, indeed, as to give little aid to Dekker's biographers 
and small comfort to the compilers of Who's Who in the whole 
Poetomachia. It may be added that to a reader not over- 
awed by Jonson's name, " Satiromastix " will offer the 
greater entertainment, for in addition to the poetry of the 
tragical part it contains many a picturesque phrase, and many 
a passage of wit and unexpected humor. What bachelor of 
either sex, for example, could find today a more descriptive 
phrase, with wider circles of suggestiveness, than the " single 
and simple life" of Mistress Miniver? 

However goodnatured Dekker's mood had remained through 
the satire, he showed considerable heat when after the play 
had been produced various unjust charges were brought 

'"Jonson had spoken of Marston's "lewd solecisms and worded trash." 
Poet., Ill, I, 224. 

^Satiromastix, 197. Crispinus complains that Jonson had folded in rid- 
dles the vices of his best friends. 



74 

against him. In his partly humorous, partly scornful and 
angry preface, he not only asserts that the poetasters merely 
defended themselves, but he also swears by his strongest oath, 
"the divinest part of true Poesy," that his satire attacked no 
one but " our new Horace." He is most annoyed by the criti- 
cism that it would have been nobler to have exposed the 
" deformity " of Jonson's mind rather than his " fortunes and 
condition of life," and replies rather bitterly that he had fol- 
lowed Jonson's own methods and that if the latter had looked 
as closely upon himself as upon others, " Horace would not 
have left Horace out of " Every Man in's Humour."^'^ But 
so little did Dekker like his own satire and so little did he 
desire to commit it to " the perpetuana of print " that he would 
not have published the play had he not been compelled to do so 
by the appearance of unauthorized versions: "neither should 
this ghost of Tucca have walked up and down Paul's Church- 
yard, but that he was raised up in print by new exorcisms ; "^* 
sincere words, these, for he never reprinted the play or 
reverted to the subject, and he never again engaged in the 
sort of personal satire that could conceivably hurt its object. 
The play brought him additional reputation. Several years 
later, Chettle thought "quick anti-Horace" the most suitable 
phrase by which to distinguish his friend f^ and Jonson seems 
to hint in the " Apologetical Dialogue " that the " multitude of 
voices " had been with his adversary. Yet perhaps there was 
pain as well as scorn in Dekker's preface, and it is very prob- 
able that "this lamentable merry murdering of innocent 
Poetry," as he there termed it, seemed just that to the author 
of the unfinished tragedy. 

The poetasters, however, had been successful in silencing 
Jonson's bitter tongue, for he made no reply except to reiterate 
in the " Dialogue " his vague charges and to announce that 
since the Comic Muse had proved so ominous, he would turn 
to Tragedy. He was reconciled off and on with Marston, and 

" P., I, 182. In this reply Dekker hardly did his own satire justice. 
^Idem, 183. 

** The amiable Rowlands in 1610 described Dekker as "an upstart pam- 
phlet-maker" and "satirical libeller." Martin Mark- All, 10. 



75 

a few years after the war he did not hesitate, together with 
Chapman and Marston, to write a friendly imitation of the 
"Westward Ho" of Dekker and Webster.*'^ It is true that 
in 1619, at Hawthornden, he branded his old rival as a rogue, 
joining with his name those of Day and Sharpham; but it 
would be absurd to attach any importance to this outbreak of 
temper, for it occurred in that famous "censure of the Eng- 
lish poets," of whom Shakespere "wanted art" and Spenser 
"pleased him not." 

" Satiromastix " ended Dekker's play-writing for 1601, but 
early in the following year he was writing a prologue and an 
epilogue for " Pontius Pilate " and " altering Tasso," possibly 
the anonymous " Tasso's Melancholy "*^ mentioned in the Diary 
in 1594; in that case alterations were needed, for Tasso had 
died during the interval. Curiously, the payment of four 
pounds extends over a period of nearly twelve months. Later 
he made additions to " Sir John Oldcastle," presumably the 
lost second part,^- wrote independently " Medicine for a Curst 
Wife," and collaborated in "Lady Jane," i and 2, and 
"Christmas Comes but Once a Year." Chettle, Heywood, 
Smith, and Webster also assisted in the production of "Lady 
Jane."*^ The original " Lady Jane " is lost, but there seems to 
be every reason for believing with Dyce** that the share of 
Webster and Dekker is represented in " The Famous History 
of Sir Thomas Wyatt. With the Coronation of Queen Mary 
and the Coming in of King Philip. As it was played by the 
Queen's Majesty's Servants. Written by Thomas Dickers and 
John Webster, 1607."*^ It was played at the Rose by Wor- 

*" It must be added that he said he had a small share in the play. 

"■ Fleay thinks Dekker may have written the original play, but there is 
no evidence except that given above, which is obviously inconclusive. 

*" But see Greg, Diary, II, 206. 

** Fleay assumes that the same collaborators worked at both parts, plaus- 
ibly, for, although Dekker's name alone is mentioned in connection with 
the second part, the record is incomplete, since neither he nor the body 
of collaborators could have written it for five shillings. See also Greg, 
Diary, II, 232. 

**lVebster (1859), xiii. 

*" Fleay says that another name for the play was The Overthrow of Rebels, 
for which properties were bought in November. 



76 

cester's men, and after the accession of James by the Queen's 
servants, who succeeded them. The fact that the play kept the 
stage attests to some popularity ; a second edition was brought 
out in 1612. It has come down to us in a bad condition; it 
is very short, and many of the scenes are fragmentary. The 
story, beginning with the death of Edward and closing with 
the execution of Jane and Dudley, incorporates the history of 
Wyatt's rebellion, but there is nothing that corresponds exactly 
with "the coronation of Queen Mary" and King Philip does 
not " come in." The source is Holinshed's " Chronicle," and 
the play follows the scheme of the then old-fashioned chronicle 
history. It is not likely that Dekker devised the plan, for 
neither " The Whore of Babylon " nor the historical tragedy of 
William Rufus was formed on a conventional model.*^ [it is 
more likely that the credit should be given to Chettle, who 
was the older man, whose name is mentioned first in the 
Diary, who was especially at home in the chronicle history, 
and whose work in " Patient Grissill " and " Hoffman " bears 
the marks of older influences than does that of Dekker. 

The collaboration of Dekker and Webster presents a very 
interesting question that has not yet been wholly solved. It 
was to be ten years before the latter was to produce an un- 
aided play, but that one is so great that we might reasonably 
expect some foreshadowing of its qualities in the fragment 
under discussion, although, of course, we have no means of 
knowing just the method of collaboration. Fleay's summary 
division into halves separated by the neutral territory of the 
tenth scene, which gives the first half to Webster, the second 
to Dekker, has really the merit of assigning to each most of 
the scenes generally recognized as marked by some charac- 
teristic of his style. It gives to Dekker Wyatt's speeches to 
his soldiers,*'' full of puns and iteration ; the dialogue in prose 

** Dr. E. E. Stoll in his John Webster has discussed the authorship of 
Sir Thomas Wyatt; and Dr. F. E. Pierce has a monograph, called The 
Collaboration of Webster and Dekker (Yale Studies, 1909). Dr. Stoll 
assigns to Dekker the plot and general conduct of the play (p. 54), and Dr, 
Pierce agrees with Dr. Stoll, The latter also discusses the treatment of 
the source. 

*' P., Ill, 110-114 (sc. 12). The first speech contains the characteristic 



77 

between Brett and the clown in which fear of the Spanish is 
ridiculed,*^ and the pathos of the interviews between Jane and 
Dudley in the Tower*** and on the scaffold.^" It gives to 
Webster the first scene^^ with the unmistakable phrasing — as it 
seems to me — of the opening lines, the second scene^- in which 
Jane and Dudley talk in a sombre strain of the unhappiness of 
their state, using Websterian figures and a rhythm unlike 
Dekker's, and the sixth scene^^ in which Wyatt addresses the 
Council in a manner impossible to the Wyatt of the Dekker 
scenes. But Fleay's line cannot be sharply drawn; for to 
Dekker belongs the clown^* who speaks a Dutch phrase and 
shows a characteristic unwillingness to bear off the gold of 
the dead Homes until he has thrust " the dog in a ditch." His 
also, I think, is the trial scene,®^ the chief feature of which is 
the "loving strife" between Jane and Dudley which melts all 
the court but Winchester. To Webster must be given the tenth 
scene,^^ in which Wyatt vehemently protests against the Spanish 
match in the same sort of language and swearing the same oaths 
that he had employed in the sixth scene.^^ Of the remaining 
scenes, the only one that demands comment is the fourth,^' 
where the patriotic unwillingness of Northumberland to fight 
against his countrymen rather favors Dekker, 

line : " Masters, friends, soldiers, and therefore gentlemen," which, inci- 
dentally, seems like a parody on Shakespere. 

*^ Idem, 114-116 (sc. 13). 

*^ Idem, 1 09-1 10 (sc. 11). 

^^ Idem, 126—130 (sc. 17). 

^^ Idem, 83-85. 

===?., Ill, 85-88. 

"^ Idem, 92-95. 

** P., Ill, 95-96 (sc. 7), and 100-103 (sc. 9). 

^ Idem, 120—124 (sc. 16). 

'^ Idem, 104-108. 

^^ So far, with the exception of sc. i and sc. 16, this in the main agrees 
with Dr. Pierce's conclusions. His total assignment to Webster, based 
upon Webster's preference for a latinized and sonorous diction, consists of 
scenes 2, 5, 6, 10, 14, 16. He adds that some of these scenes were certainly 
retouched by Dekker "and all of them may have been" (p. 159). See ch. 
9 of his book for his discussion of the play. The suggestion about Wyatt's 
speeches, I owe to Mr. Greg, Diary, II, 233. 

''P., Ill, 89-91. 



,78 

While "Sir Thomas Wyatt" does not add much to the 
fame of either author, Webster's part is not wholly colorless, 
and Dekker's, aside from the characterization, contains some 
humor and some poetry worth remembering. Steady theatre- 
goers must have been delighted with such a Shakesperian quo- 
tation as is put in the mouth of Brett : " I say again that 
Wyatt, for rising thus in arms, with the Kentish men dangling 
thus at his tail, is worthy to be hanged — like a jewel in the 
kingdom's ear."^^ Of the poetry two quotations must suffice: 
the first is Wyatt's soliloquy in the Tower, the second is spoken 
by Dudley and explains itself. 

" The sad aspect this prison doth afford 
Jumps with the measure that my heart doth keep, 
And this enclosure here of naught but stone 
Yields far more comfort than the stony hearts 
Of them that wrong'd their country and their friend. 
Here is no perjured counsellors to swear 
A sacred oath, and then forswear the same, 
No innovators here doth harbor keep. 
A stedfast silence doth possess the place : 
In this the Tower is noble, being base." 

" Look, Norfolk, Arundel, Winchester ! 
Do malefactors look thus when they die? 
A ruddy lip, a clear-reflecting eye. 
Cheeks purer than the maiden orient pearl 
That sprinkles bashfulness thorough the clouds : — 
Her innocence has given her this look." 

What do we know about Dekker the man during the five 
years which he spent writing chiefly for Henslowe? Nothing 
indeed about his manner of living — whether in a home®" or 
in lodgings — but some few details about his poverty, on the 

*' P., in, 115. Koeppel notes the quotation. 

*° It is not known whether Dekker was ever married, but it is customary 
to add that some of the following entries may refer to his family : Dorcas, 
daughter of "Thomas Dycker, gent," was christened at St. Giles in 1594: 
and Anne, daughter of Thomas Decker, yeoman," at the same place in 
1602. The register of St. Giles also records the burial of Elizabeth, 
daughter of "Thomas Dekker" in 1598; and a son of Thomas Dekker 
was buried at St. Botolph's, Bishopsgate, the same year. 



79 

one hand, and about his friendships, on the other. Of impe- 
cuniosity and shabby clothes Jonson had accused him, and he 
had accepted the reproach, intimating at the same time that 
the misfortune was shared by his accuser.*^ It was certainly 
shared by Marston, whom Jonson further represented as 
exposed to arrest for a small debt. He might truthfully have 
represented Dekker as undergoing the same experience, for 
twice during the early days of this period he was in prison, 
though for a short time only in each case. On both occasions 
Henslowe advanced the money to get him out. The first 
imprisonment was terminated only a few days after he was 
paid for "Phaeton," on February 4, 1598, when he was re- 
leased from the Counter in the Poultry by the payment of 
two pounds.*^ The second imprisonment occurred about a 
year later, and ended some ten days after he had been paid for 
"The First Introduction of the Civil Wars of France," on 
January 30, 1599, when his manager advanced three and a 
half pounds "to discharge him from the arrest of the Cham- 
berlain's men."^^ It is not known how he became liable to 
the rivals of his own company, but as he was on the best of 
terms with them two years later, the matter cannot have been 
serious. The Diary also tells us that on other occasions he 
borrowed money of his manager, whose business included 
many dealings of that sort: on May 2, 1599,®* when together 
with Chettle he had a loan of one pound to free the latter from 
prison; again, on August i, 1599,*^ another pound; and on May 
5, 1602,^® five pounds, a debt that he halved with Munday. 
His total indebtedness during those five years, then, amounted 
to less than ten pounds; the usual limit for payment was 
thirty days. Neither these debts nor these brief imprisonments 
should be taken too seriously, for in those days imprisonment 
for small debts seems to have been a common occurrence : the 
staid and respectable Chettle, for example, was likewise twice 
" P., I, 201. 

'- Greg, Diary, 83. 

^ Idem, loi, 161. 

** Idem, 107. 

^ Introd. to Diary, xlix. 

^^ Diary, 178. 



80 

released from incarceration by Henslowe and he was a more 
frequent borrower from his manager than was Dekker ; nor, in 
view of some prevaiHng ideas about the latter, should it be 
allowed to escape our memory that it was Chettle who received 
aid from Dekker, not Dekker from Chettle. There is no 
reason to think that the poet himself was much troubled by his 
misfortunes. Some seven or eight years later he first tried 
his hand at a prison interior f^ that picture represents not only 
the white-haired man to whose despair no solace but sleep is 
granted, but also a young gallant, who upon his entrance into 
the Counter roars and rages and calls for pen and ink in order 
to write " invectives, satires, libels, rhymes " against sergeants- 
at-law, and who is suddenly converted by some kindness of 
theirs into a eulogist of those "painfullest members of the 
commonwealth." This gallant is no portrait of Dekker, for 
he is "one whose outside only showed he was a gentleman, 
for within the sumptuous tomb of him was nothing but car- 
cass " ; but it is not at all unlikely that the author's own release 
from prison was accompanied by the emotions of the gallant 
who wrote so like a poet. 

His poverty deserves a word more, especially as the critics 
have been inclined to agree that it was a wretched sort of 
existence that he led during these Henslowe years. The evi- 
dence has been fully stated. Unfortunately it was not the 
business of the Diary or the object of Jonson's satire to record 
the more prosperous intervals in Dekker's life, but we have 
seen that he was among the best paid of the playwrights who 
worked for the Admiral's company, and that his income must 
have been fairly comfortable. The critics have been misled, I 
think, by the undoubted pain and poverty of a much later 
period in Dekker's life, of which he has left an account that 
cannot be misunderstood. Down to 1612 I have not found in 
his most personal utterances any complaint that he was badly 
paid or really suffering from poverty, or that he had any cause 
for misery that did not belong to the common lot of man. But 
for money, as for titled patrons and courtly favor, there is no 
sign that he greatly cared. He seems to have started out in 

"^ In Jests to Make You Merry, etc. 



81 

life with the Stevensonian philosophy that the only misfortune 
is to be a dull fool, for early in 1598 he wrote: 

" 'Tis a stout happiness to wear good clothes 
Yet live and die a fool — mew ! "** 

And such sentiments as are voiced in Lodovico's words are 
not uncommon : 

" Why should we grieve at want? Say the world made thee 
Her minion, that thy head lay in her lap, 
And that she danc'd thee on her wanton knee, 
She could but give thee a whole world: that's all, 
And that all's nothing ; the world's greatest part 
Cannot fill up on* corner of thy heart. 

Were twenty kingdoms thine, thoti'dst live in care : 
Thou could''st not sleep the better, nor live longer, 
Nor merrier be, nor healthfuller, nor stronger."*' 

Perhaps a writer endowed with such rare insight into human 
nature realized that he needed some external compulsion to 
keep him faithful to the work for which he was born, and 
that his beauty-loving nature would not have been nourished 
by a fat and easy life; for in his account of the conflict 
between Money and Poverty, in which, he gaily asserts that he 
has always fought on the side of the latter, he puts into the 
mouth of his leader the following words: "Do not I inspire 
Poets with those sacred raptures that bind men, how dull and 
brutish soever, to listen to their powerful charms, and so to 
become regular? Do not I sharpen their invention, and put 
life into their verse ?"'^° 

But Dekker was " hackwriter and slave." The " slave " miy 
be dismissed, but when one considers his rapid and abundant 
output, "hackwriter" has a descriptive value. Yet if his 
subject was sometimes or frequently dictated to him, it would 
seem that he treated it as he pleased ; and probably his unaided 

'^The Sun's Darling, P., IV, 297. 

" 2 Honest Whore, P., II, 136. See also Old Fortunatus, P., I, 99, " I am 
not enamored of this painted idol," etc. 
''"Work for Armorers, G., IV, 152. 



82 

plays owed nothing to the suggestion of his manager, or if 
a manager suggested that there was a good play in Deloney's 
" Gentle Craft," or directed him to put humanity into a brutal 
legend, that would only prove that he had an excellent manager. 
At least he did not complain; he was apparently unconscious 
that he needed pity. It is worth while remembering at this 
point that Dekker's position was not unusual. Almost the 
whole company of poets inspired by Marlowe came up to 
London and the theatres for the purpose of earning their 
living as well as of delivering their souls of great literature. 
Most of them, for a time at least, were engaged in hackwrit- 
ing and doubtless glad to get the work. This was the case with 
Chapman, Drayton, Webster, possibly Middleton, and with 
Heywood, whose career in many ways suggests a comparison 
with Dekker's but who added the resources of an actor to 
those of a writer. 

Perhaps this part of Dekker's life may be counted singularly 
fortunate, for, after all deductions have been made, the fact 
remains that he was doing the work he most enjoyed and he 
was seeing it appreciated — three, at least, of his plays by the 
most critical and brilliant audience in England; if he was 
forced into a literary quarrel he had the satisfaction of waging 
a victorious fight conducted chiefly for a friend; and he had 
the felicity of congenial comradeship in his own " trade of 
poetry." A list of his collaborators includes every important 
dramatist of the time except Shakespere and Chapman. The 
former he probably knew, and there are indications that he 
was acquainted with the latter, who was writing for Henslowe 
during the later nineties, and who, by the way, owed that 
financier of poets ten pounds — all at one heroic moment. Near 
the end of this period may have begun his acquaintance with 
Ford, a future collaborator, who was then reading at the 
Middle Temple, and who assuredly did not neglect the theatres ; 
perhaps he did not fail, either, to seek out the famous play- 
wright who had just put down Jonson. Dekker's collaboration 
with Middleton and Day began during this period: with the 
former it did not cease until 1610, and the connection, undoubt- 
edly congenial on the personal and social side, was fraught with 



83 

important consequences ; the continued friendship of the latter 
found expression in commendatory verses prefixed to a 1609 
edition of "Lanthorn and Candlelight" and in his renewed 
collaboration with Dekker when the latter was released from 
his long imprisonment. 

The intimacy with Webster deserves a word more. They 
began to work together in May, 1602, on " Caesar's Fall," a 
much collaborated play; this was followed by "Lady Jane," 
and " Christmas Comes but Once a Year " — three types in all. 
In 1602 both made commendatory verses for Munday's 
"Palmerin of England," and in 1604 for Harrison's "Arches 
of Triumph." In 1604-05 they again collaborated, this time 
on two intrigue plays, " Westward Ho " and " Northward 
Ho," in which the collaboration is of such a nature as to 
puzzle "the doctors." In 1612, Dekker wrote to the actors 
of the Red Bull, to whom he dedicated his " If It be not 
Good": 

" I wish a fair and fortunate day to your next new play for the maker's 
sake and your own, because such brave triumphs of Poesy and elaborate 
industry, which my worthy friend's muse hath there set forth deserve a 
theatre full of very Muses themselves to be spectators. To that fair day I 
wish a full, free, and knowing audience." And to that full audience, one 
honest doorkeeper." " 

The play thus affectionately commended was Webster's 
" White Devil," in the dedication of which Dekker is 
praised together with Shakespere and Heywood for " right 
happy and copious industry." A friendship unusually 
strong on each side so far as we can judge from meagre 
biographical records, a collaboration unusually difficult to 
separate into its component parts, doubtless had their origin 
in something as fundamental as character. However these 
poets may offend our taste at times, we feel in both a founda- 
tional rectitude and an incapability of self-deception that go 
far in making friendship permanent. And, although this is a 
matter of less importance, they had in common many in- 

^^ Misprinted " auditor " in the text. 

" P., in, 262. For the identification of this play with The White Devil, 
ree Stoll, John Webster, 21-22. 



84 

tellectual tastes, preoccupation with life after death, for 
example — troubled, " in a mist," in Webster's plays, serene and 
confessedly Christian in Dekker's works ; and along with this, 
an interest in the outward accompaniments of death, unusual 
even for Elizabethans, obvious in the case of Webster and 
manifested by Dekker in two plague books and not infrequent 
allusions in prose and verse. 

Among other friends of this period was Henry Chettle, who, 
after Elizabeth's death, wrote in "England's Mourning Gar- 
ment," the following suggestive stanza: 

" Quick anti-Horace, though I place thee here, 
Together with young Moelibee/* thy friend : 
And Hero's last Musaeus, all three dear, 
All such whose virtues highly I commend. 
Prove not ingrate to her that many a time 
Hath stoopt her Majesty to grace your rhyme." 

In another case, Dekker is the witness. In 1602 he wrote for 
the third part of " Palmerin of England " a graceful little ode 
addressed to his " good friend. Master Anthony Munday " : 

" If pure translation reach as high a glory 
As best invention (to deny't were sin), 
Then thou, dear friend, in publishing this story 
Hath graced thyself and thy quaint Palmerin ; 
Thou much by him, he most by thee shall win. 

For though in courtly French he sweetly spake, 

In fluent Tuscan, grave Castilian, 

A harder labor thou dost undertake 

Thus to create him a fine Englishman, 

Whose language now dare more than any can. 
Nor thou nor Palmerin in choice do err, 
Thou of thy scholar, he his schoolmaster."" 

We could wish indeed that we might know just what besides 
his work and his friendships actually did "fill up" the heart 
of "Tom" Dekker, as Heywood calls him, between his 
twenty-sixth and his thirty-first year. Not chiefly the ordinary 

" Marston, 

"In 1603 Dekker also wrote verses for Monday's translation of The 
Maiden of Confolens. I have not seen them. 



85 

and the tavern, I think, though they knew his presence, as they 
also knew that of Falstaff's creator and of every other drama- 
tist interested in Hfe's comedy; in fact, had he been the most 
starched Puritan possible of a playwright, the tavern must 
have been familiar territory. Henslowe tells us'^^ that it was 
at the Sun in New Fish Street that "The Famous Wars of 
Henry I and the Prince of Wales " was read and five shillings 
worth of " good cheer " consumed, and it was at " The Tavern " 
that " Jephthah " was read, assisted by wine to the amount of 
two shillings. 

In closing this long but scattered and imperfect discussion 
of Dekker's life and work from 1598 to the end of 1602, what 
shall be said, in summary, of the character and fortunes of the 
man ? Although we must take into consideration his two brief 
imprisonments, his comparative poverty, and the criticism con- 
nected with the Marston-Jonson quarrel, the answer, I think, is 
clear: honest, acknowledges his enemy; virtuous, asserts his 
friend; industrious, fairly thunders the record of the Diary; 
wholesomely happy, proclaims the general tenor of his plays, 
emphasizing as they do the delights of "honest mirth," the 
joy of labor, the beauty of the changing seasons, and the charm 
of human goodness, whether in its humbler aspect of kindliness 
towards others or, more rarely, its loftier form of facing death 
with dignity or preferring it to dishonor. 
""^ Diary, I, 85, 160. 



CHAPTER VI. 
The Influence of Middleton. 

1603 was a memorable year for England. In the midst of 
the " felicity " of the spring, as Dekker writes, Queen Elizabeth 
died, and during the summer following, London was swept by 
the plague, in which, as he expressed it twenty-two years later, 
her subjects followed " in a dead march a twelve-month long," 
to the number of 35,578 in London and the Liberties only.^ 
In " The Wonderful Year " Dekker wrote an account of both 
events, and of the panic that followed the Queen's death when 
" upon Thursday it was treason to cry, God save King James, 
king of England, and upon Friday high treason not to cry so." 
As a plague year necessarily entailed a lessening of activity on 
the part of those who lived by the drama, it is not surprising to 
find no record of any play for 1603, although of course Dekker 
may have been engaged in writing the masterpiece that was to 
appear upon the stage the following year. However this may 
have been, during the interval Dekker tried his hand at non- 
dramatic prose. His first book, " The Bachelor's Banquet," 
a translation of a French satire of the fifteenth century, was 
published in 1603, and was so well liked as to demand another 
edition in 1604. The second, "The Wonderful Year, 1603," 
bears the date 1603 upon its title-page, but it could not have been 
written until 1604, for it quotes some laudatory verses " here- 
tofore in private presented to the King."^ The verses are 
provided with a prologue in which the poet complains, in a 
rather Pope-like manner, of the fate of his poetry: 

" For such, am I prest forth in shops and stalls. 
Pasted in Paul's, and on the lawyers' walls, 
For every basilisk-eyed critic's bait. 
To kill my verse, or poison my conceit : 
Or some smokt gallant, who at wit repines, 

1 G., IV, 281. 

-James did not reach London until 1604. 

86 



87 

To dry tobacco with my wholesome lines, 

And in one paper sacrifice more brain 

Than all his ignorant skull could e'er contain : 

But merit dreads no martyrdom nor stroke ; 

My lines shall live when he shall be all smoke." 

Dekker did not at this time avail himself of the custom that 
permitted an appeal to a patron's purse. ■ Neither preface nor 
epistle-dedicatory was attached to " The Bachelor's Banquet," 
and he expressly disclaims any mercenary intention in the 
affectionate letter prefixed to "The Wonderful Year," ad- 
dressed to his " well-respected friend, Mr. Cuthbert Thuresby, 
Water-Bailiff of London," — a letter that I quote in full. 

" Books are but poor gifts, yet Kings receive them : upon which I pre- 
sume you will not turn this out of doors. You can not for shame but bid it 
welcome, because it brings to you a great quantity of my love : which, if it 
be worth little (and no marvel if love be sold underfoot when the God of 
Love himself goes naked), yet I hope you will not say you have a hard 
bargain, sithence you may take as much of it as you please for nothing. I 
have clapt the cognizance of your name on these scribbled papers, it is 
their livery. So that now they are yours : being free from any vile impu- 
tation save only that they thrust themselves into your acquaintance. But 
general errors have general pardons : for the title of other men's names is 
the common heraldry which all those lay claim to, whose crest is a pen 
and inkhorn. If you read, you may happily laugh ; 'tis my desire you 
should, because mirth is both physical and wholesome against the plague : 
with which sickness, to tell truth, this book is, though not sorely, yet some- 
what infected. I pray, drive it not out of your company for all that ; for, 
assure your soul, I am so jealous of your health, that if you did but once 
imagine there were gall in mine ink, I would cast away the standish and 
forswear meddling with any more Muses." 

On the fifteenth of March, 1604, a pageant was presented to 
the royal family upon the occasion of their entry into London.^ 
The poets chosen to devise the greater part of the pageant were 
Dekker and Jonson, who thus met once more as equals though 
not as collaborators. Each was proud of the honor and each 

^ The Magnificent Entertainment: Given to King James, Queene Anne 
his wife, and Henry Frederick the Prince, upon the day of his Maiesties 
Tryumphant Passage {from the Tower) through his Honorable Citie (and 
Chamber) of London, being the 15 of March. 1603. As well by the English 
as by the Strangers: With the speeches and Songes, delivered in the severall 
Pageants. 



88 

published his work.* Jonson confined himself to his own 
work; Dekker gave an account of the whole, including the 
shows of the Italians and the Belgians or Dutch, and a con- 
densed description of Jonson's share without mentioning his 
name. It is something of a task to read such a pageant 
through, as it must have been to listen to the orations and some 
of the poems, but Dekker mercifully explains at the end of 
his account : " Reader, you must understand that a regard being 
had that his Majesty should not be wearied with tedious 
speeches, a great part of those which are in this book set down, 
were left unspoken." In general, Dekker's account of the 
whole pageant is not unlike that of a modern reporter; there 
is brief account of the occasion, an enumeration of committees 
and workmen, special praise for the devices of the " Strangers," 
and for the "excellent action" and "well-tuned voice" of 
Alleyn, who was a speaker in Jonson's first pageant, and some 
interludes of description. His devices include one in which 
figure St. George and St. Andrew, who had "a long time 
looked upon each other with countenances rather of mere 
strangers than of such near neighbors," and the Genius of the 
Place, whom he represents as feminine, " contrary to the 
opinion of all the doctors." This pageant was laid aside be- 
cause the King entered the city at a different point from that 
intended. Dekker's other pageants, the fourth, fifth, and 
sixth, present a variety of mythological, pastoral and allegorical 
elements, among them the " bright-haired Graces," " for that 
epithet is properly bestowed upon them by Homer in his Hymn 
to Apollo," Vertumnus, "the master gardener and husband to 
Pomona, and Astraea, the " principal and worthiest," of whom 
the poet adds : " Having told you that her name was Justice, I 
hope you will not put me to describe what properties she held 
in her hands, sithence every painted cloth can inform you." 
There are speeches in prose and verse, and three lyrics, two 
clothed in elaborate stanzaic form, the more melodious ringing 
the changes on the refrain: 

" Troynovant is now no more a city : 
O great pity ! is't not pity ? " 

* Dekker's version was registered to print April 2, some two weeks later 
than Jonson's part. 



89 

which was sung by two Paul's boys " in sweet and ravishing 
voices." There is not much real poetry besides. In the part 
not presented, the Genius Loci speaks the well-known lines: 

" And when soft-handed Peace so sweetly thrives 
That bees in soldiers' helmets build their hives " ; 

and Fame describes her hundred tongues in a lovely phrase, — 

" mute 
As in an untoucht bell or stringless lute." 

Unlike Jonson's account, Dekker's contains little Latin; in 
fact, he ridicules using " the borrowed weapons of all the old 
Masters of the noble science of Poesy," specifically of Latin 
poetry, and continues : " The Multitude is now to be our 
audience, whose heads would miserably run a-wool-gathering 
if we do but offer to break them with hard words." For the 
rest, although he does not forget Elizabeth — "A Phoenix 
lived and died in the sun's breast" — he permits himself, 
regrettably but naturally under the circumstances, to speak 
of "this treasure of a kingdom — a Man Ruler." Dekker 
thought so well of this pageant, or was so sure of a sale, that 
three impressions were issued, one for Edinburgh, two for 
London ; and he bestowed an amount of pains upon the editing 
that one wishes he had given to his plays, going so far as to 
apologize for some of the errors that "wander up and down 
in these sheets, under the printer's warrant." 

In the passage in which he apologizes for shortening the ac- 
count of Jonson's first pageant, he adds that "an excellent 
hand" is "at this instant curiously describing all the seven, 
and bestowing on them their fair prospective limbs." That hand 
belonged to Stephen Harrison, mentioned by name at the 
end of the " Entertainment " as joiner and sole inventor of the 
architecture. His book, " The Arches of Triumph," contains 
seven full-page illustrations of the arches and nine leaves of 
descriptive text.^ To this volume are prefixed odes to Harri- 
son by Webster and Dekker. The verses of the latter, ad- 
dressed to his " friend," are as follows : 

^ Presumably by Webster and Dekker, says the article on Harrison in the 
Diet. Nat. Biog. I have not seen the book, which is very rare. The date 
is 1604. 



90 

" Babel that strove to wear 
A crown of clouds, and up did rear 

Her forehead high 
With an ambitious lust to kiss the sky, 
Is now or dust or not at all. 

Proud Nimrod's wall 
And all his antique monuments. 
Left to the world as precedents. 
Cannot now shew, to tell where they did stand, 
So much in length as half the builder's hand. 

The Mausoleum tomb ; 
The sixteen curious gates in Rome 

Which times prefer, 
Both past and present; Nero's theater 

That in one day was all gilt o'er ; 
And to these more : 

Those columns and those pyramids that won 

Wonder by height, the coloss of the sun, 
Th' Egyptian obelisk, are all forgotten; 
Only their names grow great: themselves be rotten. 

Dear Friend ! what honors then 
Bestow'st thou on thy countrymen. 

Crowning with praise 
By these thy labors, as with wreaths of bays. 

This royal city : where now stand. 
Built by thy hand. 

Her arches in new state ; so made 

That their fresh beauties ne'er shall fade : 
Thou of our English Triumphs rear'st the fame 
'Bove those of old ; but above all thy name." 

In the "Entertainment" Dekker gives to Middleton credit for 
a mediocre verse-oration of sixty lines. This was not the first 
occasion on which they had worked together, for in 1602 they 
had collaborated with others on " Caesar's Fall." Later, ac- 
cording to an entry in the " Diary," Middleton aided Dekker in 
" I Honest Whore," and the partnership was renewed in 1610 
when they wrote together " The Roaring Girl." Between these 
dates fall "Westward Ho" and "Northward Ho," in which 
Webster collaborated with Dekker. As these four plays, 
together with the second part of " The Honest Whore," form 
a group possessed of characteristics not elsewhere found in 



91 

Dekker's writings, it is necessary to disregard chronology for 
the time; and since these common characteristics involve a 
marked change in choice of subject and situation, in selection 
of characters, in dialogue, and, to some extent, in moral tone, 
it seems necessary, at the risk of repetition, to hark back for a 
moment to Dekker's early work. 

It was distinguished, as we have seen, on the one side, by a 
strong romantic tendency, whether exhibited in his treatment 
of folk-lore, allegory, or history, and by an inclination to mor- 
alize his subject; and on the other, by a tendency, almost as 
marked, to dwell genially and with a wealth of local color upon 
the habits of the humble and the gentler emotions of those 
whose lives are sweetened by labor. Dekker, then, was already 
in part a realist, but, whether influenced by temperament, 
stage-demands, or both, dealing with cheerful, healthy matters 
in a sane moral temper. There is humor in all but one of 
these early plays, sometimes boyish and extravagant to the 
point of lyricism, sometimes relying on the aid of dialect, some- 
times taking the form of a shrewd-simple wit, but raised above 
that conventional type by the extraordinary likeableness of the 
fool or servant who voices it. But for the purpose in hand, 
which would distinguish between the plays written or acted 
before 1603, and a group of plays written soon after, it is 
equally significant that certain elements are not to be found in 
these early plays, the more so as it has been too generally 
assumed that these features form an integral part of Dekker's 
genius. There is neither intrigue nor vice, not even a bad 
woman ; there is no confusion of right and wrong, and almost 
no coarseness ; " Satiromastix " is the worst offender, but for 
that play Jonson had set the pace, and in its execution Marston 
stood at Dekker's elbow. Except in this play there is very 
little satire even of the goodnatured sort. It should also be 
emphasized that these plays show no special acquaintance with 
the tavern, the prison, or low life in general, not so much as 
Shakespere had shown by the same date. 

But in the group now to be considered — "The Honest 
Whore," "Westward Ho," and "Northward Ho"— certain 
new features are conspicuous: in all three, immoral men and 



92 

men and women who make a living by vice have a consider- 
able part; in all three there are scenes in houses of ill-fame; 
in two, courtesans are married to bad men, against the will of 
the latter ; and in all three there is offensive dialogue. In the 
first of these plays, the subject, the conversion of a courtesan, 
is treated with such originality, such truth to human nature, 
and in the total effect with such high seriousness, such vigor of 
characterization and such noble poetry that the play is consid- 
ered by many Dekker's masterpiece. In certain scenes and in 
one character, "Westward Ho" retains the seriousness of 
" The Honest Whore," but the rest of the play is intrigue, and 
" Northward Ho " is on a still lower moral level. In the 
former, especially, there seem to be confused ideas of right 
and wrong, a fogginess of atmosphere that I do not find in any 
other plays in which Dekker had a part, except in the intrigue 
portions of " The Roaring Girl," certainly written by Middle- 
ton. It is probable that Webster, who dealt with lust and whose 
one unaided comedy, " The Devil's Law Case," has an abhor- 
rent plot, is partly responsible for the plan and tone of these 
comedies. But a partial explanation of the choice of subjects 
and the manner of treating them is to be found in the change 
that had been coming over the spirit of comedy. Chapman is 
perhaps the earliest offender: if the moral point of view 
is blurred in his great tragedies, it simply does not exist in 
such a comedy as " The Blind Beggar of Alexandria," printed 
in 1598. In "A Humorous Day's Mirth," 1597, one wife 
deceives her husband and two husbands their wives; in "A 
May Day," acted about 1601, the point of view is cynical and 
the dialogue and situations are offensive. The cynical point of 
view is found also in Jonson, especially in his treatment of 
women, and very certainly grossness is not absent from his 
plays. Possibly Shakespere made popular the citizen in- 
trigue play in " The Merry Wives of Windsor," and in " Meas- 
ure for Measure," acted as early as 1603, he seems to have 
followed the fashion of bringing upon the stage repellent char- 
acters, situations, and dialogue. 

It was Middleton, however, who carried the comedy of mud 
to the greatest length, although most of his plays come after 



93 

the period now being considered. He was of about the same 
age as Dekker, and shared his interest in the spectacle, the 
comedy of Hfe; in manners and customs; in details of street 
life and shop life. As a student of law he very likely knew 
a great deal about London crime and vice. Excluding "Old 
Law," which underwent alteration, his earliest extant play is 
"Blurt, Master Constable,"'' printed in 1602, in which he began, 
so far as we know, his satirical studies in the depraved morals 
and manners of his time, for the most part segregated from 
the decent : — studies that he continued with tireless industry and 
inconceivable vivacity for some eleven years, and he did nothing 
else during those years.^ By thus concentrating his great gifts 
upon the evil and the unclean, he lost the power of creating a 
character, especially a woman, at the same time good, sane, 
and effective. The mother in "A Fair Quarrel" is "good" 
but she is monstrous. That other mother, so lovable at first, 
in " Women beware Women," is as useless upon the stage of 
life as most of Thackeray's "good" women, and she soon dis- 
appears ; Middleton could not keep a good woman, even of the 
flabby variety, alive for more than a scene or two. 

Dekker had not, apparently, been influenced by the earlier 
plays of the intrigue or realistic type, using " realistic " in its 
customary and misleading sense. Perhaps the demand for that 
sort of thing was not yet sufficiently strong; perhaps thus far 
his highly lyrical and morally idealistic temperament had been 
able to resist what was so alien to its very being. But in him 
there were two natures, that of the poet and that of the jour- 
nalist; the latter first came into view in the prose of 1603 and 
1604. The success of these works, together with the same 
external pressure to which Shakespere yielded, prepared him, 
I think, to receive the influence of Middleton. 

The first extant play upon which they collaborated is " i 
Honest Whore," entered in Henslowe's " Diary "^ in 1604, 

• This play, in part a story of romantic love, contains a scene so morally 
impossible that it has puzzled the critics. The charitable view is that a 
scene may have dropped out. See Bullen's Middleton, vol. i, p. 49; also 
his Introd., XXII. 

^ Pointed out by Professor Thorndike. The Influence of Beaumont and 
Fletcher on Shakespere, pp. 102-3. 

*Greg: before March 14. Fleay: about April. 



94 

probably in the spring, as by Dekker and Middleton. It was 
registered to print November 9 anci was published the same 
year.^ It may have been acted first after the fall of Ostend, 
September 8, 1604, for Hippolito's servant says to him, " In- 
deed, that's harder to come by than ever was Ostend,"^" but 
such a reference to current events may have been put into the 
play at any time. As the two parts of the play form Dekker's 
most ambitious and sustained effort, and as they contain not 
only the broken lines of poetry that seems so spontaneously 
dramatic but also long verse speeches that appear carefully 
planned, like the debate between Hippolito and Bellafront, it is 
not unlikely that they took considerable time in the making. 
The two parts of the play have been spoken of together. It 
is the natural assumption that the second closely followed the 
first, especially since the second pre-supposes a knowledge of 
the first. Nor is it likely that Dekker should have waited a 
long time before availing himself of the popularity of the first, 
evidenced by the fact that a second edition was brought out in 
1605. That the second part was entered on the Stationers' 
Register only on April 29, 1608, proves no more than does the 
fact that it was not published until 1630.^^ There are other 
reasons for an early date for the second part: the continuity 
of character, a certain parallelism of scenes, notably the Bedlam 
and the Bridewell scenes which close respectively the two parts, 
and the circumstance that both plays contain allusions to 
"Othello "^2 and to the fall of Ostend." Fleay, to whom I 
owe the suggestion for the date of the second part and who 

" The Honest Whore, with the Humours of the Patient Man and the Long- 
ing Wife. 

"Sheet E of the singularly correct and interesting edition of 1605 has 
the headline of The Converted Courtizan throughout." Memoir, P., I, 
XXII, footnote. 

" P., n, 55. 

" The Second Part of the Honest Whore, with the Humors of the 
Patient Man, the Impatient Wife: the Honest Whore persuaded by strong 
Arguments to turne Curtizan again: her brave refuting those Arguments. 
And lastly, the Comicall Passages of an Italian Bridewell, where the Scaene 
ends. 

"P., II, 4 and 114. 

"P., II, 55 and 142. 



95 

mentions the allusions just referred to, adds that " Measure for 
Measure," 1603-4, and "2 Honest Whore "^* both employ a 
contemporaneous statute " closing the suburb houses." He 
likewise adds that the 1600 soldiers "who went abroad scarce 
a year since " must refer to the 800 vagabonds seized in 1603 
and sent aboard the Dutch fleet.^^ 

Although Henslowe mentions Middleton as one of the au- 
thors of " The Honest Whore," his name does not appear upon 
the title-page of the edition of 1604 or that of 1605, and critics 
have found it hard to distinguish Middleton's part, some even 
doubting whether he had any share in it beyond " a few sug- 
gestions on the general conduct and groundwork of the play."^^ 

In reading Middleton's comedies — straight through the list — 
one must be struck by the fact that certain situations, found 
also in " The Honest Whore," occur not once but over and 
over again. Courtesans are favorite characters, and a common 
device^^ is the marrying of one of them to a male character 
prominent in the story and just as far removed from a state of 
innocence; this is usually accomplished by means of a trick 
and the intent is humorous. In "A Trick to Catch the Old 
One," where almost all the characters are disreputable, the 
woman betrayed by Witgood is treated somewhat sympathet- 
ically in the first scene in which she appears ; the " hero " em- 
ploys her to further his own mercenary ends before he settles 
down to a "respectable " marriage, when she is wedded to an 
old man who believes her to be a rich widow. There is much 
the same sort of thing in "A Mad World, my Masters." In 
"A Chaste Maid in Cheapside," the situation reappears on a 
smaller scale. In " Michaelmas Term," it is varied when An- 
drew Little is forced to marry his own victim, the Country 
Wench. It is further to be noted that in all these cases, the 
woman promises henceforth to lead a regular life, although 
there is no evidence of conversion except possibly in " A Trick 
to Catch the Old One," One dramatist must have shown the 
other the way, and that one was surely Middleton, In the first 

"P., II, 158. 

«P„ II, 167. 

» P., I, Memoir, XXIII. 

"Bullen speaks of this in his Middleton, I, Introd., XXXIV. 



96 

place, he preceded Dekker in bringing such situations into a 
play. In "Blurt, Master Constable," Imperia, the courtesan, 
commands a far larger share of attention than Violetta, the 
legitimate heroine. The scene^^ in which Imperia talks with 
her attendants and afterwards admits her would-be suitors is 
pretty closely imitated by Dekker, though with less coarseness, 
in the scene^^ in which Bellafront is waited on by her servant 
Roger and receives Matheo and the other gallants. The scenes 
are similar and the general tone is similar.'*^ In the second 
place, Middleton could have felt, to put it mildly, no repug- 
nance for the society of the debased, for it was his chief interest 
for over ten years : Dekker, on the other hand, did not revert 
to such subjects either in his plays or in his voluminous prose, 
except in an incidental way. It must also be added that Mid- 
dleton, though incapable of Dekker 's humanity or poetry, had 
a more strenuous and persistent genius; he could follow up 
one success with a whole series of the same kind, he created a 
school, he was more of a leader than Dekker, who did not work 
one vein only and whose versatility has been so disconcerting 
to those who would neatly pigeon-hole his works. 

But if Dekker felt the influences in the air and that of Mid- 
dleton in particular, if he received from the same source direct 
suggestions as to the management of certain scenes, the indi- 
viduality that had thus far marked his work did not fail him. 
In the unpromising material furnished by the story that Chap- 
man had already treated with cynicism and that Middleton was 
later to repeat so often and so cheaply, Dekker's heart of com- 
passion and his insight into human motives saw an opportunity ; 
and the result is a play in which the chief interest is the trans- 
formation of a bad life into a good one, a conversion indeed, 
not the painless operation crowned with immediate material 

" Bullen's Middleton, I, 33-36. 

"P., II, 25-33. 

^ BuUen points out that there is a similarity between the scene in The 
Honest Whore, mentioned above, and that in Michaelmas Term, Act III, sc. 
I, in which the Country Wench dresses to receive company. Middleton, I, 
Introd., XXVI. 

Fleay says that " aloof off " is a Middletonian phrase, but Dekker uses it 
in his preface to News from Hell, G., II, 90. 



97 

reward so common in the drama, but a slow process involving 
the horror of past vileness, the anguish of rejected love, and 
continued hunger, blows, and abuse, — a conversion, it may be 
added, not at all unusual in the observation of present-day 
social workers, however rare it may seem to cloistered critics. 
True to nature is the device that makes Bellafront's love for 
one who is good the means of her redemption, and equally true 
is the mood in which Hippolito meets her, a mood heightened 
by the supposed death of Infelice. Very characteristic of 
Dekker is the great gentleness of his reply when Bellafront 
urges, as his friends had done, that Infelice is dead and is there- 
fore no longer any part of his life : 

" My vows to her fled after her to heaven. 
Were thine eyes clear as mine, thou might'st behold her 
Watching upon yon battlements of stars 
How I observe them. . . . 

. . . Let it suffice, 
I ha' set thee in the path : is't not a sign 
I love thee when with one so most, most dear 
I'll have thee fellows ? All are fellows there." 

It is a pity that this spirit could not have dominated the rest 
of Hippolito's life, but it must be acknowledged that his change 
of role from saviour to tempter is dramatically conceived and 
carried out, and that, as he does not become a blackguard, his 
final emergence from the affair "untoucht" is convincing. 
The formal argument between the two is faithful to dramatic 
convention rather than to human nature, but it contains the 
poignant contrast between innocence and shame so moving and 
so natural on Bellafront's lips. Natural too is her attitude 
towards her father, at once proud and humble, not permitting 
Hippolito to blame him even by implication and answering 
scornfully her husband's ill-natured attacks. It is true that 
Bellafront is not an heroic or tragic character. She is eager 
to satisfy a conventional morality by marrying the man who 
betrayed her when a child, and, although she cannot be happy 
with the gamester Matheo, she makes the best of a bad situa- 
tion. But to put real vitality into such a character — not very 
unusual in its general make-up — is perhaps a greater achieve- 

8 



98 

ment than to portray a tragic heroine who should find only in 
her own death or that of another a sufficient reparation or 
revenge. 

Closely connected with the story of Bellafront is that of 
Infelice. Her maiden loveliness is suggested with exquisite 
reserve in the opening scene, the very best illustration of 
Dekker's clear and vivid exposition, and in the scene in which 
she gradually wakens from her deathlike trance ; and it appears 
again when Hippolito closes the doors against everything but 
his " ceremonious sorrow " and muses upon her picture. 

" My Infelice's face, her brow, her eye. 
The dimple on her cheek ; and such sweet skill 
Hath from the cunning workman's pencil flown, 
These lips look fresh and lively as her own, 
Seeming to move and speak. 'Las 1 now I see 
The reason why fond women love to buy 
Adulterate complexion : here 'tis read. 
False colors last after the true be dead. 
Of all the roses grafted on her cheeks, 
Of all the graces dancing in her eyes. 
Of all the music set upon her tongue, 
Of all that was past woman's excellence 
In her white bosom, look ! a painted board 
Circumscribes all." 

Seventeen years later, as time goes in a play, the bright pure 
colors of Infelice's charm and Hippolito's devotion to her are 
neither so bright nor so pure. The gentleness suggested in the 
first part she still partly retains, especially in the scene in which 
Orlando puts into her hands proofs of her husband's would-be 
infidelity ; but she does not deliquesce into a patient Grissill, 
and it is with indignant frankness that she shows Hippolito 
that unfaithfulness in the husband is the same as unfaithfulness 
in the wife and that it must end in the same way. 

Of Orlando Friscobaldo, Hazlitt has spoken the final word. 
He ranks among the great characters of English comedy. Al- 
though his usual speech is whimsical, fantastic, and "mad," 
it sometimes becomes as simple and direct as a child's and its 
not infrequent roughness conceals a wise head and a heart of 
passionate tenderness. This is Dekker's second picture of 



99 

happy old age. It is not negatively so : "I fill this hand, and 
empty this." And although it is a merry old age, it is near 
heaven : " I take heed how far I walk, because I know yonder's 
my home. I would not die like a rich man, to carry nothing 
away save a winding sheet: but like a good man, to leave 
Orlando behind me." And again: "When the bell shall toll 
for me, if I prove a swan, and go singing to my nest, why so ! " 
His wife, though dead, has not departed : " She 's an old 
dweller in those high countries, yet not from me ; here, she's 
here." 

Matheo, although highly objectionable as a domestic char- 
acter, is a creation almost as original and just as consistently 
carried out. He was born without a soul and never develops 
a conscience, yet he is endowed with a sort of irresponsible 
gaiety that makes one understand why he was able to retain 
the friendship of the respectable. He does a good turn for a 
comrade at one moment, to betray him the next. He is a liar 
as shameless as Falstaff, yet he carelessly confesses the truth 
when it is sure to lead to punishment ; and he puts up with the 
prospect of a disgraceful death as readily as he accepts what 
he chooses to consider a disgraceful marriage. In the final 
scene of reconciliation Dekker does not disturb the integrity 
of his character by permitting him to " repent," allowing him 
merely to drop a little remark that evidences his desire to be 
on good terms with his rich and generous father-in-law. 

"The Humors of the Patient Man and the Longing Wife" 
is hardly at all connected with the other plots. It was undoubt- 
edly added for comic effect, and the situations in the first 
part are sufficiently amusing; but as Dekker really set a very 
high value upon the virtue of patience, Candido at times assumes 
genuine dignity of bearing and speech, which reaches its height 
in the well-known lines: 

" Patience, my lord ! why, 'tis the soul of peace : 
Of all the virtues 'tis near'st kin to heaven. 
It makes men look like gods : the best of men 
That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer, 
A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit, 
The first true gentleman that ever breathed." 



100 

In the second part, however, his " patience " in submitting to 
insult in the house of Matheo, is, to the modern point of view, 
more degrading than his yielding to his first wife's whims, for 
it amounts to cowardice. In this part, the ingenious Viola is 
replaced by a wife who " detests " ruling, a surprise that must 
have been effective to an audience mindful of her predecessor. 

Though Dekker held the pen, it seems likely that the idea of 
the Candido plot sprang from the brain of Middleton, the more 
so as the former was not at all given to depicting humors and 
the latter was. Middleton, moreover, created two characters 
very much like Candido in their willingness to put up with 
almost anything, although their patience has not the moral 
incentive supplied by Dekker, The first is Quieto in " The 
Phoenix," who hears unmoved that an "abominable next 
neighbor " has taken his best carpet, and who is willing to give 
him the table too rather than go to law about the matter.^^^ 
The second is Water-Camlet in "Anything for a Quiet Life." 
Like Candido, he has a shop and submits to bullying cus- 
tomers; like Candido he has a quick-tongued wife and an 
honest apprentice named George. He figures in a scene^'"' in 
which gallants bargain and buy, very similar to a scene in 
" The Honest Whore " f^ and in each case, before the gallants 
enter, the shrewish wife is conspicuous. As the scene in " The 
Honest Whore " just referred to, together with a similar scene 
in which Viola's brother is the gallant,^^ have no parallel in 
Dekker's other work, they have been plausibly assigned to 
Middleton by Bullen." 

Both parts of the play are marred by some coarseness ; yet 
it must be confessed that when Dekker makes a change in 
Bellafront's speech accompany a change in her heart, he is 
near to nature, and perhaps, however he may offend our taste, 
not very far from art. The closing scenes in each part, one 

^"Bullen's Middleton, vol. I, p. 185 (Act IV, sc. i). See also Bullen's 
remarks on, Quieto, vol. I, Introd., XXVIII. 

-"''Bullen's Middleton, vol. V, p. 268-279 (Act II, sc. 2). 

^R, II, 17-24. 

=" P., II, 39-48. 

^ Middleton, I, Introd., XXVI ; together with " a few comic scenes " in 
Part II. 



101 

in a mad-house, the other in a house of correction, are an appeal 
to the gallery, but to the present-day reader both are terrible 
rather than comic; and perhaps they were to Dekker, too, for 
this point of view is not forgotten but is put fittingly into the 
mouth of Infelice : 

" Methinks this place, 
Should make even Lais honest."^ 

As far as " The Honest Whore " is concerned, we cannot 
regret the influence exercised upon Dekker by contemporary 
stage demands and by Middleton. The same thing cannot be 
said of "Westward Ho"-' and "Northward Ho,"^^ which, 
though collaborated with Webster, exhibit Middletonian char- 
acteristics. They were published in 1607, but were written 
somewhat earlier. " Westward Ho " was registered to print 
March 2, 1605, as "presented by the Children of "Paul's," 
but it was probably acted towards the end of 1604. There 
are two references to cold weather^^ towards the end of the 
play and two to the length of the siege of Ostend. Of the 
latter the first^* is not important in itself, but the second, 
taken with the first allusion and with one^® that is very similar 
in " I Honest Whore " seems to be significant. It runs as fol- 
lows : " The book of the siege of Ostend, writ by one that 
dropt in the action, will never sell so well as a report of the 

" Of the Shakesperian reminiscences in this play, the most interesting is 
to be found in the reflective character and in the speech of Hippolito, 
which rather show the reaction of Hamlet upon Dekker's mind than any- 
thing so conscious as imitation. We hardly need to turn to Romeo and 
Juliet for the situation of the lovers, but Father Anselmo plays a part 
similar to that of Friar Lawrence. Characteristic of Dekker as it seems to 
me, are the two allusions to Othello, which speak respectively of the 
cruelty and the " blackness " of the Moor. For these and other reminis- 
cences, see Koeppel and Fleay. 

^ West-ward Hoe, As it hath beene divers times Acted by the Children 
of Paules. Written by Tho : Decker, and John Webster. 

^North-ward Hoe. Sundry times Acted by the Children of Paules. By 
Thomas Decker and John Webster. 

^"I doubt we shall have a frost this night," (P., II, 340), and the other 
in Clare's speech (p. 356). 

^ " How long will you hold out, think you? not so long as Ostend?" 
(P., II, 284). 

^"Indeed that's harder to come by than ever was Ostend." (P. II, 55). 



102 

siege between this grave, this wicked elder and thyself."^** On 
September 20, 1604, there was actually entered on the Sta- 
tioner's Register a book entitled " A remarkable and true his- 
tory of the siege of Ostend on either side until this present."*^ 
If Dekker meant this book, it was probably after its publication 
though not so long after as to hinder his using the future 
tense; but the whimsical "by one that dropt in the action," 
makes the reference doubtful. As " Westward Ho " was fol- 
lowed up by the " Eastward Ho " of Chapman, Marston and 
Jonson, in an effort to trade upon the popularity of the 
former,^2 [^ [^ ^ot likely that a long interval separated them. 
But "Eastward Ho" was registered to print September 4, 
1605, and may have been acted some months before. In the 
absence of anything more convincing, November or December, 
1604, would seem to fit the circumstances better than a much 
earlier or later date; possibly it was acted December 21, for 
one of the characters asks, " Will you make the townsmen 
think that Londoners never come hither but upon St. Thomas's 
night ?"3» 

The date of " Northward Ho " is more uncertain. It was 
not registered until August 6, 1607. But as it was a reply 
to " Eastward Ho,"^* and as its main object was to ridicule 
Chapman, who may have had the largest share in writing that 
play, it would naturally follow it rapidly ; delay in such a case 
would have been contrary to Dekker's temperament ; we know 
that he could write prose with unusual rapidity ,^^ and there is 
little else in "Northward Ho." This assumption of swift 
reply is contradicted by nothing in or out of the play,®® which 

"• P., n, 339. 

^* Professor Thorndike points out that such a book was published in 1604. 
Beaumont and Fletcher, 71, footnote. 

^ See Prologue, Eastward Ho. 

^ P., 11,353. 

**The relations between these three plays and the circumstance that 
Northward Ho satirizes Chapman were first made clear by Fleay. StoU 
continues the discussion. Webster, 15-16, 65-70. 

*" The Seven Deadly Sins in seven days. 

** Day's Isle of Gulls mentions the three plays in the induction but it is 
not known whether it was first acted in 1605 or 1606. Stoll's plea for 
1606 is not convincing. 



103 

may therefore be roughly dated 1605, possibly the earlier half 
of that year.^^ 

In spite of no uncertain signs of popularity, these plays did 
not greatly commend themselves to at least one of the 
authors, for Dekker's name is misspelled upon the title-pages 
and the plays were not reprinted during his lifetime — facts 
that acquire importance when we remember that he took a 
great deal of pains with the 1605 edition of " The Honest 
Whore," and wrote a preface for that stage-show," "The Whore 
of Babylon," while the prose published between 1606 and 1609 
is for the most part well edited. Whoever sent these plays to 
the press did not take the slight trouble of levelling " Moll " 
and " Clare," names by which Mistress Tenterhook^® is vari- 
ously known. For the first of the two plays, moreover, 
Dekker — or Dekker and Webster — felt the need of a sort of 
apology. The former had a habit of apologizing for work that 
he believed to be inferior ; for the satirical portions of " Sat- 
iromastix," for instance, for " The Roaring Girl," and for 
some of his later prose and non-dramatic verse. The passage 
in " Westward Ho " runs as follows : " Have amongst you, 
city dames ! You that are indeed the fittest and most proper 
persons for a comedy, nor let the world lay any imputation 
upon my disguise, for Court, City, and Country are merely as 
masks one to the other, envied of some, laught at of others, 
and so to my comical business."^^ Maybery, also, in " North- 
ward Ho," insists upon a "comical" interpretation of his 
revenge : " A comedy, a Canterbury tale, smells not half so 
sweet as the comedy I have for thee, old poet : thou shalt write 
upon't, poet."*" In connection with this point of view it should 
be borne in mind that in 1603 Dekker had made an excursion 
into satire upon women in "The Bachelor's Banquet," from 

'^ Fleay's date, c. February, 1605, has, so far as I know, nothing to sub- 
stantiate it. 

^ Fleay is wrong in saying that both names were given to Mistress 
Justiniano, who is " Moll " indeed, but who is not named till near the 
end of Act IV. Mistress Tenterhook becomes Clare in Act II, sc. 3, and 
resumes the name in Act V. Elsewhere she is " Moll." 

« P., II, 288. 

*^ P., Ill, 52. 



104 

which indeed he borrowed some of the situations in these 
comedies: in the first chapter, a wife reminds her husband that 
she might have made a better marriage, as does Justiniano's 
wife in " Westward Ho " ;*^ in the second chapter, there is an 
account of the ways in which an intriguing wife may leave 
home unsuspected, including the device of visiting a sick child 
in the country, employed in "Westward Ho";*^ in chapter 
six, a lover watches his mistress at church just as the Earl 
watches Mistress Justiniano.*^ 

"Westward Ho" is in the main an intrigue play bearing 
some resemblance in its general plan to " The Merry Wives of 
Windsor"^* but much lower in moral tone: the three idle 
women married to London citizens lead their lovers on to an 
exposure of their villainy, and incidentally the immorality of 
the husbands comes out. At the end there is a monstrous 
condoning of the past all around. But the play is partly re- 
deemed by the episode of Mistress Justiniano and the Earl, 
treated with true tragic feeling and in poetry that sometimes 
rises to a high level. The best scene in the play is that in 
which the former, hounded on and deserted by her Italian hus- 
band, consents to an interview with the Earl. One look at his 
face shows her the true horror of the situation, and to his 
flood of eloquence the unsophisticated girl can only answer, 
" I wonder lust can hang at such white hairs " ; and as he con- 
tinues to talk, reiterate with natural dramatic strategy, " I will 
think upon't. I will think upon't." Worthy of mention too 
is the Earl's soliloquy in which he poignantly presents the 
allurement of pleasure and the worst sting of evil-doing. 
Characteristic of Dekker, I think, is the recognition of the 
haughty joy of asceticism: 

" Why even those that starve in voluntary wants, 
And to advance the mind, keep the flesh poor, 
The world enjoying them, they not the world. 
Would they do this but that they're proud to suck 
A sweetness from such sourness ? " 

" P., II, 287. Noticed by Pierce, Collaboration of Webster and Dekker, 
p. 37. 
*'P., II, 312. Noticed by Pierce, 53 and iii. 
** P., 11, 304. 
** For Stoll's view of this resemblance, see his Webster, 76-78. 



106 

" Northward Ho " has no redeeming feature of poetry, 
beauty or deep feehng, but the humor is more genial than that 
of " Westward Ho " ; and the satire upon Chapman is entirely 
goodnatured. It consists in putting him as Bellamont into 
ridiculous situations and bantering him upon his white hair, 
his learning, classical and otherwise, his preference in his 
dramas for French subjects, and his making his audience " all 
fools " in his play of that name. It is probable that Dekker, 
who was acquainted with Chapman's comedies and very likely 
with the poet himself, saw no impropriety in this satire which 
has so stirred the wrath of some critics. It may be added for 
their comfort that to " Bellamont " is given virtually all the 
good sense and wisdom, such as it is, in the play : he is the con- 
fidant of the jealous Maybery and of his jealous wife, and he 
satisfies both that their jealousy is unfounded; his reverend 
appearance converts Doll Hornet from her evil life, and, finally, 
it was not he who had to pay the expense of that journey 
northward. 

While these plays throw incidental light upon some man- 
ners and customs of the time, and while they illustrate Dekker's 
facile and direct prose, ley would be of small importance in 
his literary history if it were not that they constitute a depar- 
ture from his usual work. Except in a few passages in 
"Westward Ho," not one of his great traits as an artist 
appears : there is not a single character that one can remember, 
— no gentle woman or idealizing lover, no hearty master or 
loyal servant, not even a plausible ne'er-do-well or boisterous 
exponent of goodness. There is neither tenderness nor indig- 
nation and but little insight into the human heart. In that 
medium of intrigue Dekker's genius folded its wings and per- 
mitted his unlucky cleverness to have its way. In both plays 
he freely plagiarizes from himself, both in character and in 
situation,*^ and in every case he degrades his original ; even 
so minor a character as Sir Giles Glowworm, as pointed out by 
Fleay,^* is a debased Captain Tucca, who has no business in 

** See Mr. Stoll's Webster, 72-76, for a long list of parallelisms. It seems 
to me that Mr, Stoll's ardor for parallels has led him astray in the inter- 
pretation of some facts and some characters. 

** Chr., art. Webster. 



106 

the play except to furnish a low sort of humor in the scene 
with Birdlime. The dialogue contains innuendo and coarse- 
ness of the common kind, though not the grossness of Jonson, 
Middleton, and Marston, which no care can enable the reader 
to avoid. More serious is the easy Middletonian treat- 
ment of the whole subject of morality: the final reconciling of 
persons who have every reason for hating each other, and a 
sort of fog that keeps the reader from finding out how good — 
or how bad — the people really are. While it would be easy 
to take too seriously these rapidly written and half-farcical 
plays, the fact remains that the playwright who in 1600 had 
felt honest pride in the clean mirth of " The Shoemaker's Holi- 
day," was sinning against light. Of course, in what has been 
called " theatrical journalism," Dekker, as indicated earlier in 
the chapter, was not alone. His collaborator Webster was 
never free from it except in the chilliest of all his plays, and 
during approximately the time in which the two intrigue come- 
dies came out, were written or acted Marston's " Malcontent," 
" The Dutch Courtezan," and " The Fawn " — plays so mias- 
matic at times as to compel a stiff walk among the hills to re- 
store the reader's normal enjoyment of life and literature. 
"Eastward Ho," to which the adjective "sympathetic" is 
often applied, seems to me pretty bad, including as it does the 
ugly motive of making a husband betray his own wife, and 
closing with a procession of unreal conversions, which has at 
the head a prodigal preaching in prison with all the ardor and 
convincing force of Pecksniff. 

The vexed question of Webster's part in these plays has 
hardly been settled.*'^ To me it seems clear, though once again 
" the doctors think otherwise," that he had a considerable share 
in the plots. The two men were friends and collaborators of 
several years' standing and they undoubtedly discussed the 
story. Dekker doubtless needed aid, for he nowhere exhibits 
skill in the invention of plots, either taking the outline of his 
fable from a definite source or employing a series of simple 
normal events hardly elaborate enough to deserve the name of 

" Fleay, Swinburne and Sidney Lee have briefly expressed themselves 
upon this subject; E. E. Stoll at greater length in his John Webster; and 
F. E. Pierce in The Collaboration of Webster and Dekker. 



107 

plot. I should therefore be incHned to assign to Webster the 
more unusual, subtle or abnormal elements: the device of the 
diamond in " Westward Ho " and that of the ring in " North- 
ward Ho," perhaps also Greeneshield's betrayal of his wife, 
although that may have been borrowed from " Eastward 
Ho."*^ Justiniano's disguise as "a hideous hag" shows an 
un-Dekkeresque taste for the horrible. Again, the fierce 
jealousy of Justiniano in one play and of Maybery in the other 
is wholly unlike Dekker,*^ whose one jealous husband, Cor- 
dolente,^" is a piece of helpless and despairing inefficiency. 
Again, it would be curious to find in a play of London life by 
Dekker two Italians and a servant with an Italian name.^^ 

The two plays do not present just the same problem. 
"Westward Ho" reads less like the collaboration of the two 
men upon one piece than like the building up of their collab- 
orated part about an independent fragment previously com- 
posed ; as if Dekker, repeating in part the history of " Satiro- 
mastix," had begun a serious play in which the Earl was to 
occupy the chief place, but in the midst of it, either getting 
stalled or in immediate need of money, had turned the ma- 
terial over to Webster, who created Justiniano, and as Fleay 
suggests, wrote the greater part of the first three acts^^ and a 
portion of the fourth, at that point handing the play back to 
Dekker for completion. The Earl scenes are not well dove- 
tailed into the intrigue drama: it is strange, for example, to 
find Mistress Justiniano speaking of her home as "her own 
Paradise " at the very time when her husband has sold the 
roof over her head and turned her adrift. And again, although 
Justiniano is made to say that his wife is going to give proof of 
her innocence, we are entirely unprepared to find her, after 
the terrible awakening of the first interview with the Earl, 

*»But not by Dekker. 

*' Mr. Pierce speaks of this. 

'° In Match Me in London. 

•^ The Earl, Justiniano, and Boniface. 

" Fleay seems to give the poetry to Webster, but every other critic has 
recognized it as Dekker's ; his division has the merit of taking note of the 
seasons and the weather, which, in this play, are conspicuous enough for 
the reader to remember independently of Fleay's remarks. 



108 

submitting herself to a second and even to his kisses f^ we do 
not, in fact, believe it. The whole scene reads like hasty and 
sensational joiner's work. 

" Northward Ho," on the contrary, was evidently a continu- 
ous performance, and is without unusual features as a piece of 
collaboration. To Fleay's ascription to Dekker of the satire 
on Chapman and of the Doll scenes no objection can be made; 
and it is not unreasonable to believe, with him, that the rest 
of the play belongs to Webster, for in both motive and situation 
it rather resembles the work of the younger than the older man. 
In both plays, however, it seems not improbable that the more 
experienced playwright went rapidly over the whole, altering 
here and adding there.^* 

Since it has been necessary to dwell upon these plays, let the 
discussion close with a boating song that one could wish re- 
moved from its place at the end of " Westward Ho." It was 
sung, we remember, by the young voices of Paul's boys. 

" Oars, oars, oars, oars ! 
To London hey, to London hey ! 
Hoist up sails and let's away, 
For the safest bay 
For us to land is London shores. 

Oars, oars, oars, oars ! 
Quickly shall we get to land 
If you, if you, if you. 
Lend us but half a hand. 
O lend us half a hand ! "^ 

" P., 11, 335-336. 

" See Mr. Pierce's book for a different point of view. Like Stoll, whose 
material he uses, he gives Dekker credit for the plot and " everything of 
real literary value — whether serious or comic" (p. 132), and he sees "his 
hand" or at least his "influence" in every single scene (p. 131). His 
various tests, the most important of which is a mathematical comparison 
of Dekker's preference for short swift words with Webster's liking for a 
more sonorous and latinized diction, substantially agree in giving to the 
latter " a considerable part and probably by far the greater part," in West- 
ward Ho, of Act I, sc. I, Act HI, sc. 3, and probably Act I, sc. 2, and Act 
III, sc. 2; and, in Northward Ho, Act I, sc. i. Act II, sc. 2, and the first 
half of Act V. As far as it goes, this assignment agrees with that of Fleay, 
but it does not go very far. 

^ Another song mentioned on p. 335 is not preserved. 



109 

Dekker's direct collaboration with Middleton did not close 
with " The Honest Whore," but there was a gap of many years 
before the writing of their next play, " The Roaring Girl." 
Although involving a break in the chronological order usually 
observed in this study, it seems best to speak of the play in 
this chapter, both on account of the collaboration and on 
account of the intrigue sub-plot sometimes wrongly attributed 
to Dekker.^*' Besides, unless there are lost plays — and there 
is no trace of any — " The Roaring Girl " followed next after 
"Northward Ho"; between 1606 and 1610 he was writing 
prose. It was printed in 1611^" and the title-page tells us that 
it had lately been acted at the Fortune by the Prince's players, 
the same company that, about 1607, were playing the revised 
"Whore of Babylon." The title-page also bears the rather 
significant and perhaps apologetic motto : " My case is altered, 
I must work for my living." The prologue tells us that the 
play had been expected long,^® and the epilogue that some of 
the audience may look 

" For all those base tricks publish'd in a book, 
Foul as his brains they flow'd from, of cut-purse[s], 
Of nips and foists, nasty obscene discourses, 
As full of lies as empty of worth or wit, 
For any honest ear or eye unfit."°' 

The only book concerning Moll Cut-purse known to have been 
written before 161 1 is John Day's " Mad Pranks of Merry Moll 
of the Bankside," registered to print August 7, 1610, but not 
known to have been published. It is impossible to tell whether 
it was a source of the play in question, or the bad book re- 
ferred to in the epilogue, or neither. Near its close the epi- 
logue promises another play on the same subject: 

^As by Mr. Stoll and Mr. Pierce. 

" The Roaring Girle, or Moll Cut-Purse. As it hath lately beene Acted 
on the Fortune-stage by the Prince his Players. Written by T. Middleton 
and T. Dekkar. 

"P., Ill, 131. 

•* P., Ill, 233-234. Middleton's address " To the Comic Play-Readers " 
would seem to refer to the same book. This address, not found in Pear- 
son, is printed in Bullen's edition of The Roaring Girl in Middleton's 
Works, IV, 7-8. 



110 

" The Roaring Girl herself some few days hence 
Shall on this stage give larger recompense.""* 

It is clear that by 1610, when Day's book was registered, the 
general character of the heroine must have been well known; 
and to this date the play may pretty confidently be assigned.*^ 
It could not have been written much earlier, for Mary Frith, 
the heroine, was not born before the middle or later eighties 
of the sixteenth century ; nor is it likely that it was written in 
the year of publication, for by February, 1612, Chamberlain 
describes Mary as doing penance at Paul's Cross, very penitent 
but maudlin drunk, — a condition of afifairs that probably did 
not begin at just that date and that would have interfered seri- 
ously with the sympathetic interpretation of her character that 
Dekker and Middleton thought suitable for the stage.^r The 
argument for 1610 would apply nearly as well to 1609, were 
it not for two important circumstances: first, there was a 
severe outbreak of the plague during 1609, that, in the case of 
a doubtful play, "makes 1610 rather than 1609 a probable 
date " f^ second, during 1609 Dekker wrote four prose works, 
one of them being of such a character as to forbid our classing 
it among his rapidly written compositions. It would seem that 
in 1610 Middleton and Dekker planned to collaborate on a play 
that should utilize the public interest in an unusual character, 
giving to the subject a kindly interpretation and incorporating 
in it a slight romantic comedy of Dekker's creation and an 
intrigue sub-plot of Middleton's. Dekker also planned to em- 
ploy on the stage some of the material on the lives and language 
of rogues that he had already used in his " Bellman " books.®* 

'" Field's Amends for Ladies, 1611, fulfills the requirements of this descrip- 
tion so far as a part of the title is concerned : " With the Merry Pranks 
of Moll Cut-Purse"; but the play, not published till 1618, now contains but 
one slight scene with Moll in it. So Fleay. 

" Fleay's date, 1604, has nothing to recommend it. 

"^ See Bullen's Introduction to The Roaring Girl, 3-6, for the facts given 
in the paragraph above, and for some other data derived from a prose work 
published in 1662, entitled The Life and Death of Mrs. Mary Frith, Com- 
monly called Mai Cutpurse. Exactly collected and nozv Published for the 
delight and recreation of all Merry disposed persons. 

" Professor Thorndike, Beaumont and Fletcher, 30. 

"^For the exhibition of thieving cant in the play, see P., Ill, 216-222. 
For the Bellman books, see below, ch. 7. 



Ill 

At this point appeared a book on Moll, whether by Day or 
another, that perhaps roused a double indignation, first as " vile 
and full of lies," and second, as forestalling, to some extent, 
their own play. The title shows that " The Roaring Girl " was 
printed soon after it was acted; this, indeed, must have been 
necessary for the reputation of the authors, since another play 
on the same subject was shortly to appear. 

Bullen, whose material I have freely used, leaves little to be 
desired in his division of labor between Dekker and Middle- 
ton.^^ The distribution of the thjree plots has been indicated; 
no one who has happened to read these two playwrights at 
about the same time will quarrel with the judgment that gives 
Middleton credit for the intrigue plot, but as this has been 
done, I will quote from Bullen : 

" The very names of the characters — Laxton, Goshawk, Greenwit, Galli- 
pot, etc., — are evidences in his favor. This style of nomenclature, which 
Middleton commonly adopted in his comedies, was not affected by Dekker. 
Then the characters are just such as we find in other plays of Middleton. 
Mistress Gallipot may be compared with Mistress Purge in ' The Family of 
Love ' or with Falso's Daughter in ' The Phoenix ' ; and Mistress Openwork, 
the jealous scold, is a repetition of Mistress Glister in ' The Family of Love.' 
The dialogue is conducted with Middleton's usual smartness and rapidity. 
. . . The feigning of the pre-contract in the second scene is a repetition of 
the device in ' A Trick to Catch the Old One ' ; the conduct of Laxton and 
Gallipot is precisely the same as that of Witgood and Hoard." '"' 

One might add the purely negative argument that if the 
intrigue plot is not given to Middleton, there will be little left 
for him except the scene at Sir Alexander's;®^ this, I agree 
with Bullen, should be assigned to him, but chiefly because 
it would hardly seem that Dekker could have written a love 
scene without some touch of tenderness on one side or the 

"^ Middleton, I, Introd., XXXV-XXXVIL He gives to Dekker, Act I (P., 
Ill, 137-1S0), Act II, sc. 2 (P., 163-169), and Act V (P., Ill, 211-232). 
Though he gives the greater part of Act III (P., Ill, 169-194) to Middleton, 
he is doubtful about the meeting of the lovers (P., 194—200), but " inclines " 
to Middleton; the next scene (p. 200-211) is Middleton's but the rhymes at 
the end are Dekker's. 

^Introd. to Middleton's Works, I, XXXV-XXXVIL See also Arthur 
Symons, Cam. Hist. Eng. Lit., VI, 74-75- 

"P., Ill, 104-200. 



112 

other, or some kindly natural words between the two girls so 
situated. 

As usual with Dekker, the opening scenes make clear the 
situation, and to the lover of poetry they are the most attrac- 
tive in the play. Characteristic is the one engaging feature in 
the mercenary old father, the pleasure he takes in the adorn- 
ment of his parlor and galleries : 

" The furniture that doth adorn this room 
Cost many a fair gray groat ere it came here, 
But good things are most cheap when they're most dear. 
Nay, when you look into my galleries. 
How bravely they are trimm'd up, you all shall swear 
You're highly pleas'd to see what's set down there: 
Stories of men and women, mixt together, 
Fair ones with foul, like sunshine in wet weather. 
Within one square a thousand heads are laid 
So close, that all of heads the room seems made ; 
As many faces there, fill'd with blithe looks, 
Shew like the promising titles of new books. 
Writ merrily, the readers being their own eyes, 
Which seem to move and to give plaudities : 
And here and there, whilst with obsequious ears 
Throng'd heaps do listen, a cut-purse thrusts and leers 
With hawk's eyes for his prey : I need not shew him ; 
By a hanging villanous look, yourselves may know him, 
The face is drawn so rarely. Then, sir, below. 
The very floor, as 't were, waves to and fro. 
And like a floating island seems to move 
Upon a sea bound in with shores above." 

Characteristic of Dekker, too, are the "antic" verbal tricks 
of the Lylian servant Neatfoote; and, in the same scene, the 
idea of betrothed love as a knot tied by heaven.^^ Another 
familiar idea that comes to the front is the hatred of forced 
marriage, found in his prose and two of his plays,^^ and here 
put into the mouth of Sebastian. In Sir Alexander we have 
an old man, a favorite character with Dekker, but not of the 
type he liked best to portray, so little inspiring indeed that after 
the first scene his creator could not succeed in making him 
speak verse that rises above mediocrity. All criticism of the 

** In Satiromastix, P., I, 249-250, this idea is twice expressed. 
*' The Witch of Edmonton and The Wonder of a Kingdom. 



113 

poetry, however, Dekker or Middleton forestalled in the 
prologue : 

" Only we entreat you think our scene 
Cannot speak high, the subject being but mean ; 
A Roaring Girl, whose notes till now ne'er were. 
Shall fill with laughter our vast theatre. 
That's all which I dare promise. 

But the chief interest of the play centers in Moll, of whom 
Middleton finely said in his address to the Reader: "Worse 
things, I must needs confess, the world has taxed her for than 
has been written of her; but 'tis the excellency of a writer to 
leave things better than he finds 'em,"'° Dekker makes her a 
big, athletic, courageous woman, honest in all senses of the 
word, endowed with the hawk's eye and the alert mind of a 
born detective, rather contemptuous of both men and women, 
preferring the comradeship of men, but resolved to remain 
"the head of herself." To her the jest of the whole story lies 
in Sir Alexander's misconception of her character: 

" He was in fear his son would marry me. 
But never dreamt that I would ne'er agree," 

But she is glad to give help and pity to " poor ring-doves," and 
it affords her keen delight to save riotous but foolish Jack 
Dapper from the Counter, the " university " to which his father 
had plotted to send him. In times that must have been very 
bad for unprotected women, she maintains herself by her wit 
and spirit : " Base is that mind that kneels unto her body " ; 
and she gives a thorough drubbing to the cowards who had 
thought ill of her and had made a practice of slandering 
women. It is a pity that Dekker thought it necessary to put 
so much " realistic " language into her mouth, but in spite of 
this circumstance, in many ways she strikes a modern note : she 
is a live human being first and afterwards a woman, possessed 
of unconventional tastes and of physical strength sufficient to 
protect herself from insult, but not therefore depraved. In the 
play, she is found in all sorts of society, from that of the 
professional cheat whom she exposes, to that of Mary Fitz- 

'» Bullen's Middleton, IV, 8. 
9 



114 

Allard and Sir Alexander, but she remains throughout a con- 
sistent character, never the extraordinary medley we find in 
" The Fair Maid of the West," good as are some portions of 
that lively yarn. 

At the close of this period of six years we must remind 
ourselves that Dekker was no longer writing for Henslowe 
alone, although choice or circumstances were still taking him 
most often to the Fortune. The long Henslowe connection, 
lasting from 1598 to the end of 1602, had been broken by but 
one play that we know of, " Satiromastix," written for the 
Chamberlain's men. If Dekker produced any plays in 1603, 
they have not come down to us. During the spring of 1604 he 
sold " I Honest Whore " to Henslowe, and it was accordingly 
played at the Fortune by the Prince's servants, who succeeded 
the Admiral's men ; presumably the second part took the same 
path as the first. Then, probably in 1604 and 1605, came 
"Westward Ho" and "Northward Ho," both written for 
Paul's boys and acted by them. The period of prose that fol- 
lowed these plays was interrupted, so far as we know, only by 
the revival of " The Whore of Babylon " in 1607 by the 
Prince's men at the Fortune ; and there, after another interval 
of prose, was produced under the same direction " The Roar- 
ing Girl." 



CHAPTER VII 

The Period of Prose 

In 1603, we remember, Dekker first began to write prose, 
achieving at once the brilHant success of " The Bachelor's 
Banquet," which he followed up in 1604 by " The Wonderful 
Year." A man entirely dependent upon pen and inkhorn might 
well be forgiven for working this newly discovered vein, but 
he continued to produce plays through 1604 and 1605. The 
following year he turned again to prose, which he wrote unin- 
terruptedly for four years. During this period theatrical con- 
ditions were changing somewhat: about 1607 or 1608 the 
children's companies were breaking up; and popular tastes 
seemed best pleased, on one side, by the comedy of the Middle- 
tonian or Jonsonian order, on another by the romances of 
Beaumont and Fletcher, so overwhelmingly successful' that 
Shakespere followed the trail they blazed. It would seem that 
Dekker did not care to continue the sort of comedy attempted 
in " Westward Ho " and " Northward Ho," and it was only 
later that he felt the influence of the romances. But possibly 
his ceasing to write plays arose solely from the fact that prose 
paid better. However this may be, he seems inclined, both at 
the beginning and at the close of his prose period, to think that 
playwrights had a pretty hard lot. In 1607 he wrote of poets, 
by which he means playwrights : " I know the Lady Pecunia 
and you come very hardly together, and therefore trouble not 
you : upon this ancient theater^ you present your tragical 
scenes, for here you shall be sure to be clapt";^ and in 1609 
when the plague was raging worse than usual, he complained : 

" Playhouses stand like taverns that have cast out their masters, the doors 
locked up, the flags, like their bushes, taken down ; or rather like houses 
lately infected, from whence the affrighted dwellers are fled, in hope to live 
better in the country. The players themselves did never work till now ; 

* The debtor's prison. 

'Jests to Make You Merry, G., II, 353. 

115 



116 

there Comedies are all turned to Tragedies, there Tragedies to Nocturnals, 
and the best of them all are weary of playing in those Nocturnal Tragedies. 
Think you to delight yourselves by keeping company with our poets? Proh 
dolor ! their Muses are more sullen than old monkeys, now that money is 
not stirring ; they never plead cheerfully but in their term times when the 
two-penny clients and penny stinkards swarm together to hear the Stager- 
ites. . • . O pitiful Poetry, what a lamentable prenticeship hast thou served 
and, which is the greatest spite, canst not yet be made free."^ 

Of Dekker's life between 1606 and 1610 little is known 
except what can be learned from his writings. It is likely that 
the friendship for Middleton, Webster, and Day, which, in all 
three cases, looked "before and after," was still a source of 
pleasure; and there were others, among them the unknown 
"M. R." and "E. G." who wrote commendatory verses for 
" Lanthorn and Candlelight." Dekker continued poor ; lightly 
and as a matter of course he affirms that in the war between 
Money and Poverty he served on the side of the latter.* It 
appears, too, that as the years went by, he did not grow richer 
for appeal to a patron, a procedure that he despised in 1604, 
was more and more resorted to, though always in a way that 
shows how deeply he resented its "baseness." But we may 
be sure that Dekker was not in desperate straits between 1606 
and 161 o, for when such a time really arrived, both his personal 
speech and the tone of his writing indicate the true state of 
affairs. Besides what he received from his prose, presumably 
he had something from the four plays printed in 1607. The 
usual price of plays seems to have been, according to Bullen, 
sixpence a copy, but that does not clear up the more interesting 
question of Dekker's receipts. We do not know just what 
calls he had upon his purse, but at least, with no resource but 
his pen,^ he managed to keep out of the debtor's prison and 
to maintain a generally happy spirit. He continued to be " in- 
dustrious"; for if some of his books were written with extra- 
ordinary rapidity, like " The Seven Deadly Sins," it is equally 
certain that others, such as the exposure books, were the result 

^ Work for Armorers, G., IV, 96-97. 

* Epis.-Ded., Work for Armorers, G., IV, 89. 

^ There is the possibility that he did some of the odd jobs for which a 
literary man is fitted, such as preparing manuscript for the press, but there 
is no evidence that he did so. 



117 

of prolonged labor, and the artist's heart and hand must have 
worked slowly at his book of prayers. 

Although Dekker's epistles-dedicatory and other prefaces 
tell very few facts, they are saturated with personality and 
reflect his permanent attitude towards some aspects of life as 
well as his mood at the time of writing. Fortunately his epis- 
tles do not always fulfil his own requirement for such a com- 
position, — " an epistle just the length of a hench-man's grace 
before dinner, which is long enough for any book in conscience, 
unless the writer be unreasonable."'' But unfortunately from 
the view-point of this study, Dekker had no great liking for the 
personal dedication. This is shown in several ways. Although 
it is believed that he supervised the printing of his most impor- 
tant plays, including " Old Fortunatus," " The Shoemaker's 
Holiday," " Satiromastix," and both parts of " The Honest 
Whore," as well as " The Whore of Babylon," he dedicated 
but one to a patron; and that dedication was written late in 
his life.'' Three of his pageants are dedicated, naturally enough, 
to the mayors of London in whose honor they were written. 
Six of the prose works are without the epistle-dedicatory. The 
one prefixed to " The Wonderful Year," was, as we have seen, 
addressed to a friend, who might have as much of the author's 
love as he desired " for nothing " ; and the book, asserted 
Dekker, was " free from any vile imputation " except that it 
was bold enough to demand acquaintance. In the dedication 
of " Canaan's Calamity," he avoids the appearance of address- 
ing a patron for pecuniary reward by explaining that his book 
is " an unfeigned token of our good affection " for favors 
" shewed in the depth of extremity to some poor friends of 
mine, remaining in your pleasant lordship of High-cleere." He 
likewise dedicates "A Knight's Conjuring" to one who had 
shown him a personal kindness. But for the most part a tone 
of apology runs through his epistles,^ usually for the fashion 
he is following, often for the quality of his work, and once, at 

^ Lanthorn and Candlelight, G., Ill, 240-241. 

'In 1631 for Match Me in London. 

* See especially the Epis.-Ded. of News from Hell, G., II, 87-88. Alstf 
the dedication of The Dead Term, G., IV, 7—8, and of Canaan's Calamity, 
G., I, 5. 



118 

least, for going to the press so often. I quote one typical 
passage : 

" It may happily seem strange unto you that such an army of idle words 
should march into the open field of the world under the ensign of your 
name : you being not therewith made acquainted till now ; you may judge 
it in me an error ; I myself confess it a boldness. But such an ancient and 
strong charter hath custom confirmed to this printing age of ours, by giving 
men authority to make choice of what patrons they like, that some writers 
do almost nothing contrary to the custom, and some by virtue of that privi- 
lege dare do anything. I am neither of that first order, nor of this last. 
The one is too fondly ceremonious, the other too impudently audacious. I 
walk in the midst, so well as I can, between both : with some fruits that 
have grown out of my brain, have I been so far from being in love that I 
thought them not worthy to be tasted by any particular friend, and there- 
fore have they been exposed only to those that would entertain them : neither 
did I think the fairest that ever was mine so worthy that it was to be 
looked upon with the eye of universal censure.'" 

There is comparatively little flattery in these dedications ; 
sometimes indeed Dekker is simply blunt, as when he offers 
his contest between Money and Poverty to Thomas Hewet in 
the following terms : " Let it not appear strange that from the 
Regiment of Knights Military I make choice of you to be a 
chief in the best of these armies, you being no professed war- 
rior. But I myself serve on the one side, and the world marks 
you out to be an able commander in the other."^" It is very 
significant that Dekker's one epistle positively overflowing with 
enthusiasm and humility is addressed to another poet; inci- 
dentally it shows his insight into the true values of life. I 
quote the greater part of the dedication of " The Dead Term " 
to " the very Worthy, Learned, Judicious, and Noble Gentle- 
man, Sir John Harington, Knight " : 

" Sir, the love which your immortal Ariosto tells to the world that you 
really bear to divine (but now poor and contemned) Poesie, hath a long 
time made me an honorer of those bright ascending virtues in you, which 
those holy and pure flames of her have kindled in your bosom. Happy you 
are by birth, happy by your bringing up, but most happy in that the Muses 
were your nurses, to whom you have been so tender that they make you an 
elder son and heir of their goodliest possessions. So that your love to them 
hath drawn from others an honorable love and regard of you."" 

^ Lanthorn and Candlelight, G., Ill, 177-178. 
^" Work for Armorers, G., IV, 89. 
" G., IV, 7. 



119 

Similar, though less enthusiastic, is the letter to the dramatist 
Lodowick Carlell in 1631.^- If these two epistles show one of 
Dekker's chief passions, that prefixed to " The Dove," the first 
part of his book of prayers, shows another, — his ardor for 
moral beauty : 

" Sir, I present unto your view a book of prayers ; not that you need my 
weak instructions for you are known to be a good proficient in God's school 
and have more of this heavenly language in you by heart than I can teach 
you by precept. , . . Four birds of Noah's Ark have taken four several 
flights. The Dove, which is the first, flies to your hand ; not by chance, but 
upon good choice, as knowing you to be a dove yourself. The badge which 
a dove wears is innocence : and by wearing that Christian armor you 
defended yourself, and returned safe out of the Lion's den with Daniel, 
when it was thought you should have been devoured. God hath since 
heaped graces on your head, and by the hands of his Anointed hath rewarded 
you with deserved honors in the self-same place into which you were 
thrown to be swallowed up by destruction. Receive therefore, I beseech 
you, a Dove, sithence her harmless and spotless wings have carried you 
over such great danger to so great happiness."" 

However modest Dekker was in the presence of really great 
merit like that of the translator of Ariosto, he sometimes fol- 
lowed the practice of his contemporaries by promising immor- 
tality to the patron whose name he employed. The following 
passage from the epistle prefixed to " The Seven Deadly Sins " 
I quote, partly to illustrate this rather unusual expression of 
confidence in himself, and partly to use material not readily 
accessible :^* 

" I am sorry, dear Sir, that in a time so abundant with wit, I should 
send unto you no better fruit than the sins of a city : but they are not 
common, for they were never gathered till this year, and therefore I send 
them for the rarity : yet now I remember myself, they are not the sins of a 
city, but only the picture of them. And a drollery, or Dutch piece of lant- 
skop, may sometimes breed in the beholder's eye as much delectation as 
the best and most curious master-piece excellent in that art. Books being 
sent abroad after they are begotten into the world, as this of mine is, are 
in the nature of orphans ; but being received into a guardianship, (as I 
make no doubt but that this shall), they come into the happy state of adopted 

"P., IV, 133. 

" G., V, 5-6. 

" This dedication, not found in Grosart's edition, is given in the Cam- 
bridge edition. It is addressed to Henry Fermor, Esquire, Clerk of the 
Peace to the County of Middlesex. 



120 

children. That office must now be yours, and you need not be ashamed of 
it, for kings have been glad to do them honor, that have bestowed such a 
never-dying honor upon them. The benefit you shall receive is this, that 
you see the building up of a tomb, in your lifetime, wherein you are sure 
so to lie as that you cannot be forgotten ; and you read that very epitaph 
that shall stand over you, which by no envy can be defaced, nor by any 
time worn out." 

Dekker's general prefaces are often informal little essays 
upon subjects that he felt strongly about at the time of writing, 
and so he naturally gave freer rein to his wit and fantasy. In 
the address " To the World " prefixed to " Satiromastix," we 
have seen him justly angry and scornful ; something of the 
same mood is seen in his later prefaces when he scoffs at the 
ignorant critic and the ignorant reader, though usually in a gay 
and lively manner. Many of the prefaces are addressed to 
appropriate classes. The first of these is the modest and serious 
little speech to the " Professors of the Gentle Craft of what 
degree soever " ;^^ another is addressed to " Soldiers,"^® — " a 
name more full of ancient honor, or of more honorable worth 
I cannot speak " ; the first of the popular exposure pamphlets^'^ 
is dedicated to magistrates and good citizens ; the second expo- 
sure book^^ adjures his " own Nation " to come to the defence 
of " Law, Justice, Order, Ceremony, Religion, Peace, and that 
honorable title of Goodness " ; a plague book written in 1625 
has a preface " To the Reader that flies, the Reader that stays, 
the Reader lying in a haycock, the hard-hearted Country- 
Reader, and the broken-hearted City-Reader."^^ The preface 
of "The Raven's Almanack "is a long satire upon the dissipated 
habits of courtiers, gallants, law students, and those "that are 
the mere Sons of Citizens, who never heard any music but the 
sound of Bow-bell." One of the happiest in conception is the 
dedication of " The Gull's Horn Book " to " all Gulls in gen- 
eral," which I quote in full : 

" Whom can I choose, my most worthy Mecaen-asses, to be patrons to this 

'^ The Shoemaker's Holiday, 
" Work for Armorers, G., IV, 91. 
" The Bellman of London. 
^^ Lanthorn and Candlelight. 
^^ A Rod for Runaways. 



121 

labor of mine fitter than yourselves? Your hands are ever open, your 
purses never shut. So that you stand not in the common rank of dry-fisted 
Patrons, who give nothing, for you give all. Scholars, therefore, are as 
much beholden to you as vinters, players and punks are. Those three 
trades gain by you more than usurers do by thirty in the hundred : you 
spend the wines of the one, you make suppers for the other, and change 
your gold into white money with the third- Who is more liberal than you ? 
who but only citizens are more free? Blame me not therefore, if I pick 
you out from the bunch of book-takers, to consecrate these fruits of my 
brain (which shall never die) only to you. I know that most of you, O 
admirable Gulls, can neither write nor read. A Hornbook have I invented, 
because I would have you well-schooled. Paul's is your walk ; but this your 
guide : if it lead you right, thank me : if astray, men will bear with your 
errors because you are gulls." 

But why write an address to the reader, asks Dekker, and 
repHes : 

" Oh good Sir, there's as sound law to make you give good words to the 
Reader as to a constable when he carries his watch about him to tell how 
the night goes, though perhaps the one oftentimes may be served in for a 
goose and the other very fitly furnish the same mess. Yet to maintain 
the scurvy fashion and to keep custom in reparations, he must be honeyed 
and come over with Gentle Reader, Courteous Reader, and Learned Reader, 
though he have no more Gentility in him than Adam had, that was but a 
gardener, no more Civility than a Tartar, and no more Learning than the 
most errant stinkard, that, except his own name, could never find anything 
in the hornbook. 

" How notoriously therefore do good wits dishonor not only their calling, 
but even their creation, that worship glow-worms instead of the sun because 
of a little false glistering? In the name of Phoebus, what madness leads 
them unto it? For he that dares hazard a pressing to death, that's to 
say, to be a man in Print, must make account that he shall stand, like the 
old weathercock over Paul's steeple, to be beaten with all storms. Neither 
the stinking tobacco-breath of a Satin-gull, the aconited sting of a narrow- 
eyed critic, the faces of a fantastic stage-monkey, nor the Indeed-la of a 
Puritanical citizen must often shake him. No, but desperately resolve, like 
a French post, to ride through thick and thin : endure to see his lines torn 
pitifully on the rack: suffer his Muse to take the bastoon, yea the very 
stab, and himself, like a new stake, to be the mark for every haggler, and 
therefore, setting up all these rests, why should he regard what fool's bolt 
is shot at him? Besides, if that which he presents upon the stage of the 
world be good, why should he basely cry out, with that old poetical madcap 
in his Amphitriio, Jovis stimmi causa, dare plaiidite : I beg a plaudite for 
God sake. If bad, who but an Ass would entreat, as players do in a 
cogging epilogue at the end of a filthy comedy, that, be it never such 



122 

wicked stuff, they would forbear to hiss, or to damn it perpetually to lie 
on a stationer's stall. For he that can so cozen himself as to pocket up 
praise in that silly sort makes his brain fat with his own folly."™ 

It is characteristic of Dekker that in the midst of a lively 
description of poor poets — " most pitiful, pure fresh-water sol- 
diers," " thin-headed fellows that live upon the scraps of inven- 
tion, and travel with such vagrant souls and so like ghosts, in 
white sheets of paper, that the Statute of Rogues may worthily 
be sued upon them because their wits have no abiding place 
and yet wander without a passport " — he explains : " Bear wit- 
ness all you whose wits make you able to be witnesses in this 
cause, that here I meddle not with your good poets. "-^ These 
poor poets, Dekker says in the same address, become critics, 
ignorant ones at that : 

" O you book-sellers, that are factors to the Liberal Sciences, over whose 
stalls these drones do daily fly humming, let Homer, Hesiod, Euripides, and 
some other mad Greeks, with a band of the Latins, lie like musket-shot in 
their way when these Goths and Getes set upon you in your paper fortifi- 
cations ; it is the only cannon upon whose mouth they dare not venture : 
none but the English will take their parts, therefore fear them not, for such 
a strong breath have these cheese-eaters that if they do but blow upon a 
book, they imagine straight 'tis blasted : Quod supra nos ; nihil ad nos, they 
say : that which is above our capacity shall not pass under our commen- 
dation." 

More than once, Dekker complains of the difficulty of suit- 
ing his publishers or the tastes of his capricious readers. In 
the preface to "Jests to Make You Merry," written in 1607, 
the tone is gay rather than otherwise : 

" Books are a strange commodity ; the estimation of them riseth and 
falleth faster than the exchange of money in the Low Countries, which 
alters more often than the Englishman doth the fashion of his apparel. . . . 
There's no one stationer stall can fit all customers with books to their diet, 
nor can all men that write, if all that can but speak should write, fit some 
stationers. Go to one and offer a copy ; if it be merry, the man likes no 
light stuff: if sad, it will not sell. Another meddles with nothing but what 
fits the time. I would have his shop stufft with nothing but proclamations, 
because he lies i' the wind only for the change of weather."^ 

* General preface. The Wonderful Year. 
^G., I, 79-80. 
^ G., II, 271-272. 



123 

He maintains that he is not one of those writers who " find 
no sweetness but in drawing blood. Of those sharp-toothed 
dogs you shall find me none. I hold no whip in my hand but 
a soft feather, and there drops rather water than gall out of 
my quill. If you taste it and find it pleasing, I am glad; if 
not, I cannot be much sorry, because the cook knew not your 
diet, so that his error was his ignorance, and ignorance is a 
venial sin, to be pardoned." Many years later, when poverty 
was really closing down upon Dekker, he writes with a rare 
note of bitterness : " A thousand palates must be pleased with 
a thousand sauces : and one hundred lines must content five 
hundred dispositions. . . . He is tied to a stake like a bear to 
be baited, that comes into Paul's Churchyard to be read."'^ 

Dekker's prose works may be roughly classified as follows : 
books dealing with London life, including two plague-books, 
" The Gull's Horn-Book," " The Seven Deadly Sins of Lon- 
don," and " The Dead Term . . . Written in manner of a 
Dialogue between the two cities London and Westminster " ; 
two books exposing current methods of cheating and thieving; 
two medleys, both having some features in common with the 
exposure books ; a translation ; a controversial work of mixed 
verse and prose ; a mock almanac ; a non-dramatic morality, 
and a prayer-book. There is not one of these pamphlets that 
does not throw light upon the morals or manners of the Eliza- 
bethan or Jacobean era, and the larger number seem to have 
been written with obvious enjoyment. All but the second part 
of "Jests to Make You Merry" are well edited, and most of 
them bear Dekker's name, correctly spelled, upon the title-page ; 
two notable exceptions are "The Wonderful Year," which, 
however, Dekker claims elsewhere,^* and " The Bachelor's Ban- 
quet," which is likewise unsigned.^^ 

The first of these prose works is " The Bachelor's Banquet," 
described by the sub-title as " A Banquet for Bachelors : 
Wherein is prepared sundry dainty dishes to furnish their 

=«G., Ill, 3". 

^ The Seven Deadly Sins, II, 12. 

^ The Double P. P. was also published anonymously, but a presentation 
copy with Dekker's autograph is said to exist. See Mem. Introd. by 
Grosart, V, XXII. 



124 

Table, curiously drest and seriously served in. Pleasantly dis- 
coursing the variable humors of Women, their quickness of 
wits and unsearchable deceits." Upon this book, with its 
humor, its irony, its wealth of vivid detail, its highly dramatic 
dialogue, its studied naivete grimly lighted at times by a flash 
of tragic feeling, Swinburne exhausts his vocabulary of praise. 
The praise is deserved, but the critic was apparently unaware 
that " The Bachelor's Banquet " is a translation of " Les Quinze 
Joyes de Mariage," a brilliant and finished prose piece of the 
fifteenth century,^^ summing up in itself the accumulated medi- 
aeval satire upon women. Dekker's translation indeed merits 
mention among Elizabethan translations. It is a singularly vital 
work, expressed in the purest, most idiomatic English and re- 
taining most of the excellencies of the original, as Swinburne 
bears witness. He often follows the French closely, almost 
word for word, but does not hesitate to expand, or, more rarely, 
to omit^^^ or to insert some reflections of his own. In the total 
effect, it must be confessed that after passing through that 
kindly and whimsical mind, the irony of the misogynist loses 
something of its edge and the style something of its incisiveness. 
The sub-title indicates, too, a sort of gay exuberance that is 
very far from the original. This exercise in translation was 
perhaps a happy circumstance for Dekker's prose style, for as 
time went on he seems more and more to have striven after 
precision of phrase, and not infrequently he attained it. On 
the other hand, it may be possible to trace the influence of this 
woman-hater's pamphlet in the passages of satire on women, 
brief and of little variety, scattered through both prose and 
plays and greatly at variance with his dramatic representation 
of women. 

Dekker's next prose work is " The Wonderful Year. 1603. 
Wherein is shewed the picture of London lying sick of the 
Plague. At the end of all (like a merry Epilogue to a dull 
Play) certain Tales are cut out in sundry fashions, of purpose 
to shorten the lives of long winter's nights that lie watching 
in the dark for us." Except for a sort of introduction con- 

-' Attributed to Antoine de la Sale. 

-'^ The only important omission is of the introductory chapter. 



125 

cerning the death of Ehzabeth and the accession of James, 
the volume corresponds to the title — a vivid and terrible pic- 
ture of plague-stricken London, for the most part avoiding 
the disgusting, but full of such minute details as the rise in 
the price of rosemary from twelve pence an armful to six 
shillings a handful. About half the book consists of a collec- 
tion of stories, of such moving and varied interest that they 
might still serve to shorten such nights as watch for us in the 
dark. Dekker dwells upon the hardheartedness of the country 
people, the " Hobbinols," who would not give a cup of water 
to the fleeing Londoner or bury him when dead ; upon the 
cowardice of the doctors who " hid their synodical heads as 
well as the proudest, and whose medicines had not so much 
strength to hold life and soul together as a pot of Finder's ale 
and a nutmeg " ; and over and over, upon the suddenness with 
which the " sickness " smote its victim, from the bride struck 
down during the marriage service to the churchwarden who 
mockingly kept the churchyard for himself when others neede^ 
to use it, and who three days later required that lodging.^^jGitar- 
acteristic is the story of the Dutchman who fled to Holland, 
where death, " to shew him that there were other Low Country 
besides his own," seized his child, "a little f rekin " ; «ild still 
more so, the incident of the sick scholar who desired a decent 
burying from the friend who had loved him "not because he 
was poor, yet he was poor, but because he was a scholar."^^ 

Comedy shoulders Tragedy. After telling the pathetic story 
— a sort of generalized story — of the death of the only son of 
a rich and haughty father, who must with his own hands bury 
the body, not in a consecrated spot, but in his own orchard or 
the proud walks of his garden, Dekker's " spirit grows faint 
with rowing in the Stygian ferry ; it can no longer endure the 
transportation of souls in this doleful manner," and he promises 
the reader " some prosperous shore." He is slow in reaching 
it : "I am amazed to remember what dead marches were made 
of three thousand trooping together ; husbands, wives and chil- 
dren being led as ordinarily to one grave as if they had gone 

^ Possibly well known, for Dekker adds " whose name I could for need 
bestow upon you but that I know you have no need of it." 



126 

to one bed " ; and he could write down a catalogue of poor 
wretches that died without any other succor than the " common 
benefit of earth and air." But he reiterates his intention of 
relieving his story of death and sorrow : 

" We will therefore play the soldiers, who at the end of any notable 
battle, with a kind of sad delight, rehearse the memorable acts of their 
friends that lie mangled before them : some shewing how bravely they 
gave the onset : some, how politickly they retired : others, how manfully 
they gave and received wounds : a fourth steps forth and glories how 
valiantly he lost an arm : all of them making, by this means, the remem- 
brance even of tragical and mischievous events very delectable." 

Of the " comical and ridiculous stuff " that he promises, the 
best is the story of the musical, valiant tinker, whose kettle- 
drum sounded so sweetly that it drew after it whole swarms 
of bees, and who, after burying the body of a plague-killed 
citizen, went swaggering through the town with " Have ye any 
more Londoners to bury? hey down-a-down dery, have ye any 
more Londoners to bury?" The most ghastly of the tales is 
that of the drunkard who reeled into a pit half filled with 
bodies, imagining that he was in his own house, and that all 
his fellows were there, " as they were indeed," and slept soundly 
until waked by the sexton who cast upon the sleeper " some 
dead men's bones and a skull or two that lay scattered here and 
there." One pathetic story, evidently of common occurrence, 
Dekker merely outlines : 

" Neither will I speak a word of a poor boy, servant to a chandler 
dwelling thereabouts, who being struck to the heart by sickness was first 
carried away by water to be left anywhere, but landing being denied by an 
army of brown-bill men that kept the shore, back again was he brought, 
and left in an out-cellar ; where, lying groveling and groaning on his face — 
amongst fagots but not one of them set on fire to comfort him — there con- 
tinued all night, and died miserably for want of succor." 

Brief quotations hardly give an idea of the style, now simple 
and direct, but more often swift, urgent and passionately full. 
Let me quote once more : 

" What an unmatchable torment were it for a man to be barred up every 
night in a vast silent charnel house? hung, to make it more hideous, with 
lamps dimly and slowly burning, in hollow and glimmering corners : where 



127 

all the pavement should, instead of green rushes, be strewed with blasted 
rosemary, withered hyacinths, fatal cypress and yew, thickly mingled with 
heaps of dead men's bones ; the bare ribs of a father that begat him lying 
there ; here the chapless hollow skull of a mother that bore him : round about 
him a thousand corses, some standing bolt upright in their knotted winding 
sheets : others half mouldered in rotten coffins, that should suddenly yawn 
wide open, filling his nostrils with noisome stench, and his eyes with the 
sight of nothing but crawling worms. And to keep such a poor wretch 
waking, he should hear no noise but of toads croaking, screech-owls howl- 
ing, mandrakes shrieking: were not this an infernal prison? would not the 
strongest-hearted man, beset with such a ghastly horror, look wild? and 
run mad ? and die ? And even such a formidable shape did the diseased 
City appear in : For he that durst, in the dead hours of gloomy midnight, 
have been so valiant as to have walked through the still and melancholy 
streets, what think you should have been his music? Surely the loud 
groans of raving sick men ; the struggling pangs of souls departing : in every 
house grief striking up an alarum : servants crying out for masters : wives 
for husbands; parents for children, children for their mothers: here he 
should have met some frantically running to knock up sextons ; there, 
others fearfully sweating with coffins, to steal forth dead bodies, lest the 
fatal handwriting of death should seal up their doors. And to make this 
dismal consort more full, round about him bells heavily tolling in one place 
and ringing out in another. The dreadfulness of such an hour is unutter- 
able : let us go further." 

1606 was a full year. The first^^ production was " The 
Double P. P. A Papist in Arms. Bearing Ten several 
Shields. Encountered by the Protestant. At Ten several 
Weapons. A Jesuit Marching before them," — a title that, 
properly interpreted, gives pretty accurately the table of con- 
tents. They consist of a riddle on the " Double P. P.," who, it 
seems, is the Pope ; an extended portrait of the Jesuit, first in 
verse, then in prose; ten portraits of different varieties of the 
Papist, designated by terms drawn from heraldry; a riddle 
on the Single P. or Protestantism ; a series of portraits of the 
" Protestant Army," including among others, the nobility, the 
clergy, the universities, and the merchants ; and finally " The 
Battaile and Retrayte." Of the portraits, written in rhyme 
royal, that of " Nautes or the Sea-man " is the best, closing 
with the characteristic line : 

" If thou wouldst know thy maker, search the seas." 
=»S. R., Dec. 9, 160S. 



128 

Although the verse is either too fluent or too rugged, the piece 
has considerable force and heartiness and a degree of pleasant 
quaintness. It was doubtless written to take advantage of the 
outburst of patriotism that followed the Gunpowder Plot. 

At about the same time appeared " News from Hell ; Brought 
by the Devil's Carrier,"^" with the running title, " The Devil's 
Answer to Pierce Penniless." Fifteen years before, in his 
" Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the Devil," Nash had 
sent a Knight of the Post to Hell entreating for the liberation 
of money. The pamphlet proved to be so popular that he 
planned to write an account of the return of his messenger, 
but he never did so. Two others took up the task before 
Dekker : Middleton, whose " Black Book," published in 1604, 
contains a sort of sequel to Nash's story, much of it in de- 
plorable taste ; and an anonymous writer^^ of whose book, 
Dekker wrote in the preface of his own : " But it may be, the 
first answer that he sent by the Post was in the morning, for 
he strives to speak soberly, gravely, and like a Puritan." What- 
ever other motives urged him on to the writing of this reply, 
affection for his friend and a desire to give that friend's book 
a creditable sequel must have had some weight. The well- 
known invocation to Nash was followed up by a reasonable 
degree of success in imitating his style. 

" News from Hell " tells, with much spirit and gaiety and with 
considerable genial satire upon the sins and foibles of the day, 
the story of the adventures of the Knight of the Post to whom 
Nash had entrusted his errand; first, among the wicked on 
earth in order to see fashions and get table-talk, then upon his 
arrival at Acheron, which looks and smells like Moor-ditch, 
"when the water is three-quarters drained out." There fol- 
lows an account of sessions in Hell, when the style grows more 
serious as it pictures the condemned and Conscience their ac- 
cuser, "poor in attire, diseased in his flesh, wretched in his 
face, heavy in his gait, and hoarse in his voice." Securing 

^ Fleay thinks that News from Hell is identical with The Return of the 
Knight of the Post from Hell with the Devil's answer to Piers Penniless' 
supplication, S. R., Jan. 15, 1606, and The Devil's let loose, S. R., Jan. 25. 
Both entries were cancelled Feb. 17 by order of the court. 

" See Rimbault's Introd., A Knight's Conjuring, XIII. 



129 

with great difficulty access to the Lord of Hell, the messenger 
gets an unsatisfactory reply and would return to earth but is 
interrupted by the horrible figure of a usurer. After a hag- 
gling settlement of charges between Mercury and Charon, the 
reader comes to the last incident, nobly told : 

" On the other side of the river stood a company crying out lustily, ' a 
boat, hey, a boat, hey ! ' And who should they be but a gallant troop of 
English spirits, all mangled, looking like so many old Romans, that for 
overcoming Death in their manly resolutions were sent away out of the 
field, crowned with the military honor of arms. The foremost of them was 
a personage of so composed a presence that Nature and Fortune had done 
him wrong if they had not made him a soldier.^ In his countenance there 
was a kind of indignation fighting with a kind of exalted joy, which, by his 
very gesture, were apparently decipherable, for he was jocund that his soul 
went out of him in so glorious a triumph ; but disdainfully angry that she 
wrought her enlargement through no more dangers: yet were there bleed- 
ing witnesses enow on his breast, which testified he did not yield till he 
was conquered, and was not conquered till there was left nothing of a 
man in him to be overcome." 

The hero, '' scorning to be his own Chronicle " to the question- 
ing Charon, leaves the office to one of his followers, and 
Charon dismisses the company " to those happy places which 
were allotted out to none but Martialists." In the meantime 
the Knight of the Post has gone to Nash, now in the Elysian 
gardens, and been received "with as few words as he [Nash] 
was wont to carry pence in his purse." The story closes with 
a brief picture of the " insulae fortunatae," in which "the very 
benches whereon they sit are buds of violets, their pillows are 
hearts-ease, their sheets, the silken leaves of willow." 

As usual, there is many a contemporary picture, one of the 
best being that of those surly " key-turners," those " big fellows 
that stand like giants at lords' gates," with " cheeks strutting 
out like two foot-balls, being blown up with powder beef and 
brewis " ; many a happy phrase, like the description of Orpheus 
as " most clear-throated singing man " ; many a pun like this : 
" Poetry, like honesty and old soldiers, goes upon lame feet 
unless there be music in her." 

'- This hero was William Eps, as Dekker explains in a marginal note in 
A Knight's Conjuring. 

10 



130 

The book is good reading today. Then it was so popular 
that the following year Dekker issued another edition under 
the title of "A Knight's Conjuring, Done in Earnest, Dis- 
covered in Jest."^^ It is provided with a new dedication and a 
new and picturesque opening which takes less for granted than 
did that of "News from Hell"; it is divided into chapters 
with verse-titles; the paragraphs are supplied with marginal 
topic-sentences,^* and, above all, there is a noteworthy ex- 
pansion of the brief description of the abode of the blest. 
The eulogy of Nash is omitted, perhaps because he becomes 
so conspicuous a figure in the conclusion. The best known 
part of the added chapter has already been quoted, but since 
this study would gladly emphasize anything that reveals Dek- 
ker's tastes and ideas, let me quote further from his general 
description of Elysium. 

" The walls that encompass these goodly habitations are white as the 
forehead of heaven ; they glister like polisht ivory, but the stuff is finer : 
high they are like the pillars that uphold the court of Jove ; and strong 
they are as towers built by enchantment ; there is but one gate to it all, 
and that's of refined silver : so narrow it is that but one at once can enter : 
round about, wears it a girdle of waters that are sweet, redolent and 
crystalline : the leaves of the vine are not so precious, the nectar of the 
Gods nothing so delicious. 

" Walk into the groves, you shall hear all sorts of birds melodiously 
singing : you shall see swains deftly piping, and virgins chastely dancing. 
Shepherds there live as merrily as kings, and kings are glad to be com- 
panions with shepherds. The widow there complains of no wrong: the 
orphan sheds no tears, for covetousness cannot carry it away with his gold, 
nor cruelty with the sway of greatness; the poor client needs fee no lawyer 
to plead for him, for there's no jury to condemn him, nor judges to 
astonish him. ..." 

" Neither is this a common inn to all travellers," continues 
Dekker, half humorously. No landlords dwell there, no 
fencers, vintners, farmers, and not a tailor " unless he creep 
through the eye of his needle " ; few gentlemen ushers, and of 

°* Edited by E. F. Rimbault for the Percy Society, vol. 5 ; not given in 
Grosart, except the prefaces. 

^* On the margin Dekker calls attention to the fact that the dispute 
between Charon and Mercury is borrowed from Lucian, thus forestalling 
modern scholarship by some three hundred years. See Cant. Hist. Eng. 
Lit., IV, 404, 



131 

women " scarce one amongst five hundred has her pew there." 
All infants are welcome, and "holy singers whose divine 
anthems have bound souls by their charms." Elsewhere we 
have learned that most poets are there, except " some pitiful 
fellows, ballad-makers." Scholars are admitted to this society, 
" but the number of them all is not half so many as are in one 
of the colleges of an university," for they either " kindle fire- 
brands in the sanctified places by their contention; or kill the 
hearts of others by their coldness." 
Again : 

" One field there is amongst all the rest set round about with willows ; 
it is call'd the field of mourning, and in this, upon banks of flowers that 
wither away even with the scorching sighs of those that sit upon them, are 
a band of malcontents ; they look for all the world like the mad-folks in 
Bedlam, and desire like them, to be alone; and these are forlorn lovers: 
such as pined away to nothing for nothing : such as for the love of a 
wanton wench have gone crying to their graves. ... all the joy that these 
poor fools feed upon is to sit singing lamentable ballads to some doleful 
tunes : for though they have changed their old lives, they cannot forget 
their young loves; they spend their time in making of myrtle garlands and 
shed so much water out of their eyes that it hath made a pretty little 
river, which lies so soaking continually at the roots of the willow trees 
that half the leaves of them are almost washed into a whiteness." 

" There is another piece of ground, where are encamped none but sol- 
diers : and of those, not all sorts of soldiers neither, but only such as have 
died nobly in the wars: and yet of those but a certain number too: that is 
to say, such that in execution were never bloody : in their country's revenge, 
severe but not cruel : such as held death in one hand and mercy in the 
other : such as never ravisht maidens, never did abuse no widows, never 
gloried in the massacre of babes : were never drunk of purpose before the 
battle began because they would spare none ; nor after the battle did never 
quarrel about pledging the health of his whore. Of this garrison, there are 
but a few in pay, and therefore they live without mutiny." 

This added chapter was written nearly forty years before 
Milton's " Areopagitica." Like the greater part of " The Gull's 
Hornbook," it is curiously modern even to the matter of para- 
graphing; the thought is unencumbered by the sentence struc- 
ture, and the phrasing, for the most part, is direct and precise. 

To 1606 also belongs " The Seven Deadly Sins of London :^^ 
Drawn in seven several Coaches, Through the seven several 

^S. R., Oct. 6, 1606. 



132 

Gates of the City ; Bringing the Plague with them." It bears 
upon its title-page " Opus septem Dierum," and it has all the 
rapidity of thought and style and all the perfervid emotion of a 
composition written down as soon as conceived. The induction 
is full of passionate love for London and for Elizabeth and 
eloquent pity for "the seventeen Dutch Virgins of Belgia," 
and France, the " gallant Monarchy," that " was full of princes 
and saw them all lie mangled at her feet " ; " full of people and 
saw in one night a hundred thousand massacred in her streets." 
In his indictment of London, Dekker tells us that the plague 
has not yet ceased : " that Desolation, which now for three 
years together, hath hovered around about thee, will at last 
enter, and turn thy gardens of pleasure into churchyards; thy 
fields that served thee for walks into Golgotha; and thy high- 
built houses into heaps of dead men's skulls." The book has 
the form of a seven-fold pageant. Very significant of 
Dekker's point of view are the deadly sins, the "actors" in 
" this old Enterlude of Iniquity " which " seven may easily 
play . . . but not without a Devil." Politic Bankruptism and 
Shaving refer to various ways of cheating men out of their 
money : the meaning of the first is clear ; Shaving includes 
usury, the tricks of the law played upon clients, widows and 
children, and many others forms of extortion, not omitting 
the cruel custom by which prison-keepers might in a short 
time make "the charges of the house" three times the debts 
of the prisoner. Another "actor," Candlelight, includes all 
the sins most easily committed at night. Apishness is imita- 
tion ; for the presence of such a slight and short-lived sin in 
that grave company, Dekker rather apologizes, the more so 
as it is chiefly practised by rich fools and by women, who are 
men's she-apes, especially in the matter of fashion. The 
names of Lying, Sloth, and Cruelty speak for themselves. 

Against Cruelty, the indictment is, as one might expect, 
the severest and the most vivid. " Cruelty ! the very sound of 
it shews that it is no English word: it is a Fury sent out of 
hell, not to inhabit within such beautiful walls, but amongst 
Turks and Tartars." " Cruelty challenges no room," cries 
Dekker, in London's " thirteen strong houses of sorrow, where 



133 

the prinsoner hath his heart wasting away sometimes a whole 
prenticeship of years in cares. They are most of them built 
of freestone but none are free within them: cold are their 
embracements : unwholesome is their cheer : despairful their 
lodgings : uncomfortable the societies : miserable their inhabi- 
tants : O what a deal of wretchedness can make shift to lie in 
a little room! if those thirteen houses were built all together, 
how rich would grief be, having such large enclosures." But, 
again continues Dekker, Cruelty is not responsible for the 
whipping-post, the stock, the cart, the scaflfold, for Justice 
must receive no wrong. But the real cruelty lies in the forced 
marriage of children, especially of a young girl to an old man, 
of which a vivid and terrible picture is given ; near the close 
of this discussion occurs the comment : " Hence comes it, that 
murders are often contrived and as often acted; our country 
is woeful in fresh examples." Dekker next inveighs against 
cruel creditors who, by locking up their debtors, rob them of 
all means of paying their debts. There is a passage about 
cruel masters who, after ill-treating their prentices for seven 
years, " send them into the world to beg," that is, to find no 
chance to practice their trade ; " as if trades that were ordained 
to be communities had lost their first privileges and were now 
turned to monopolies." Two othert forms of cruelty that 
always roused Dekker's indignation are assailed: the failure 
to provide London with suitable burying places, and the failure 
to establish a hospital and grave-space for those who died 
in the "fields." Entirely modern is the warning, though 
couched in a poet's language, that if those former pits, " those 
caves of horror and ghastliness," be opened up for new victims, 
the very persons who neglected to provide graves will be 
poisoned by " the contagious damps." 

In the section on Politic Bankruptism, there is a curious 
illustration of Dekker's swift conversion of the abstract into 
the concrete, for he soon forgets, as does the reader, the deadly 
sin in his picture of the sinner, " poor rich man," " ill-painted 
fool," whose wife and children are left to go to ruin after his 
death. 

In October, 1607, was registered the medley entitled "Jests 



134 

to make you Merry : With the Conjuring up of Cock Watt, the 
Walking Spirit of Newgate, to tell tales. Unto which is 
Added, the misery of a Prison and a Prisoner. And a Para- 
dox in praise of Serjeants. Written by T. D. and George 
Wilkins." It was printed the same year. To the jest-book is 
prefixed a puzzle in the form of a preface, for it uses the 
first person, has Dekker's peculiarities and is signed T, D. and 
G. W. Of the sixty jests, I should be glad to assign the 
greater portion to Wilkins, for Dekker is very seldom dull, and 
if he tells a story that could not be told today, it may usually 
be seen to have had some point. The sixteenth jest is told 
with such swiftness and gusto that it may be his; perhaps he 
remembered Middleton's play, though " Blurt, Master Con- 
stable," seems to have been a not uncommon expression. The 
second part of the book, Cock Wat's discoveries, is really the 
first of Dekker's writings, afterwards so popular, that deal 
with cheats and thieves and the way they work their game. 
The ingenious contrivance of making Cock Wat, the spirit of 
Newgate, tell what he knows of the prisoners and their crimes, 
also enables Dekker to draw the affecting picture of the old 
man who mourns the loss of liberty, and that of the riotous 
young man who writes the paradox in praise of sergeants. 
The book is full of information of curious sorts, and it cannot 
be neglected by one interested in the personality of the author. 
The next pamphlet was " The Dead Term or Westminster's 
Complaint for long Vacations and short Terms. Written in 
manner of a Dialogue between the two Cities London and 
Westminster,"^® 1608. This pamphlet reads like a rather per- 
functory piece of work; the humor, small in quantity, is less 
spontaneous, the preaching less fervent, than in the prose 
already discussed. It begins with a long speech by West- 
minster, complaining chiefly that the vacations are bad for her 
main business, which is Law, and begging that there may be 
one continuous term instead. There is considerable history, a 
description of the Thames possibly suggested by Spenser's 
marriage of the Thames and the Medway, an account of the 
sad state of Charing Cross, an enumeration of the sins of the 

««S. R., Nov. 3. 1607. 



135 

city, and, incidentally, a eulogy of the law and " a paradox in 
praise of a Pen." To every point London replies categorically. 
Over against Charing Cross is set St. Paul's steeple and its 
complaint, the best part of which is concerned with the walks 
in Paul's. In history, London mercilessly relates her whole 
career. But towards the end, Dekker gets so bored himself 
that he is constrained to tell a tragic-humorous tale of the 
plague, including, as a marginal note points out, a description 
of Sturbridge Fair. 

In 1608 the exposure of rogues begun in " Jests to Make 
You Merry" was continued in "The Bellman of London: 
Bringing to Light the most Notorious Villanies that are now 
Practised in the Kingdom. Profitable for Gentlemen, 
Lawyers, Merchants, Citizens, Farmers, Masters of house- 
holds, and all sorts of servants, to mark ; and delightful for all 
men to read. Lege, Perlege, Relege." The title-page is pro- 
vided with a woodcut of the bellman accompanied by his dog. 
This book was so successful that it was twice reprinted in 1608 
and it was followed up the same year by " Lanthorn and 
Candlelight, or the Bellman's second Night's-walk. In which 
He brings to light a Brood of more strange Villanies than 
ever were till this year discovered." To the second edition 
" newly corrected and amended,"^' 1609, Dekker prefixed a 
warning to the reader, singularly contemptuous from his kindly 
pen: 

" There is an Usurper that of late hath taken upon him the name of the 
Bellman, but being not able to maintain that title, he doth now call himself 
the Bellman's brother : his ambition is, rather out of vain glory than the 
true courage of an experienced soldier, to have the leading of the van, but 
it shall be honor good enough for him, if not too good, to come up with the 
rear. You shall know him by his habiliments, for, by the furniture he 
wears, he will be taken for a Beadle of Bridewell. It is thought he is 
rather a neuter than a friend to the cause : and therefore the Bellman doth 
here openly protest that he comes into the field as no fellows in arms with 
him." 

This Beadle of Bridewell is Samuel Rowlands, too clever a 
pamphleteer and versifier, one would think, to need to trade 

" The first edition was entered S. R., Oct. 25, but I have seen none 
earlier than that reprinted by Grosart. 



136 

upon the popularity of other writers. This was not the first 
offence ; in 1602 he had pubHshed a tract under the misleading 
title, " Greene's Ghost Haunting Cony-Catchers," and possibly 
he borrowed still more from Nash. Whatever called forth 
Dekker's disclaimer of any literary affiliation has perished, but 
Rowlands promptly took to himself the disparaging remarks 
quoted above and in a pamphlet called " Martin Mark-all, 
Beadle of Bridewell, his defense and answer to the Bellman of 
London," published in 1610, tried to turn the tables upon the 
original Bellman by a somewhat querulous and incoherent com- 
plaint that he himself was better acquainted with canting or 
thieves' dielect than Dekker, and that the latter had used the 
material collected by Harman in his " Caveat for Cursitors."^* 

Both complaints were founded on truth. No reader of 
Rowlands doubts that he had a more intimate acquaintance 
with the sordid details of low life than Dekker. Moreover, 
Dekker bears witness against his own proficiency when he 
urges that the dialect is " so crabbed that seven years' study 
is little enough to reach to the bottom of it, and to make it run 
off glib from the tongue."^^ 

Dekker's obligations to Harman require a word more. 
" Caveat for Cursitors " was preceded by Awdeley's " Fra- 
ternity of Vagabonds,"*" and so was not the first on the sub- 
ject. It is composed of definitions of rascals and of their 
specific modes of cheating or stealing, with a large admixture 

^* " In the meantime, because the Bellman entreateth any that is more 
rich in canting to lend him better or more with variety, he will repay his 
love double. I have thought good not only to shew his error in some places 
in setting down old words used forty years ago, before he was born, for 
words that are used in these days (although he is bold to call me an 
usurper, for so he doth in his last round and not able to maintain the title) 
but have enlarged his dictionary (or Master Harman's) with such words as 
I think he never heard of (and yet in use too) but not out of vain glory, 
as his ambition is, but indeed as an experienced soldier that hath dearly 
paid for it ; and therefore it shall be honor good enough for him (if not too 
good) to come up with the rear (I do but shoot your own arrow back 
again) and not to have the leading of the van as he means to do, although 
small credit in the end will redound to either." Works of Rowlands. 
Hunterian Club (1880), II, 36. 

^Bellman of London, G., Ill, 156. 

*"* Licensed 1560-1, printed the same year and in 1566. 



137 

of stories, most of them very far from edifying. If Dekker 
used Harman — he quite as Hkely used " The Groundwork of 
Cony-Catching" which is based upon Harman's tract — he 
showed modesty and discretion, for he omitted all the stories 
supplied in both of his books a picturesque framework, greatly 
amplified most of the definitions and added others. He was 
no more conscious of dishonesty than when he selected the 
incidents from Deloney's " Gentle Craft " for a play. Here 
were a number of rogue-books lying around, agreeing only in 
the grammar and dictionary of canting, and Dekker conceived 
the idea of bringing out a new rogue-book, which should dis- 
card all the personal matter of the old ones, and should be put 
into a new framework and suitably embellished and brought 
down to date; in other words, he was using common property 
in a fresh way. 

The first twenty pages of " The Bellman of London " read 
like the beginning of a romance. The elements are: a visit 
into the country, a lovely spot in the greenwood, vocal with 
the song of birds and paved with yellow flowers and red and 
white daisies ; smoke rising from a mysterious building, which 
the adventurer naturally seeks out, a huge hall furnished for 
a banquet, a hidden gallery from which the rogues' feast may 
be observed, and an old hostess, whose tongue, loosed by drink, 
tells tales out of school. But the old woman's explanations of 
villainy grow rather wearisome, and so do those of the Bellman 
that form the latter part of the book, although they sometimes 
have an historical interest, and when Dekker drops into narra- 
tive, as he often does, he is never dull. But he grows tired 
of the company he is keeping: 

"How long shall I sail upon these godless waters? Is it not time to 
get to shore ? . . . What a battle have I undertaken ? and with what an 
ignoble enemy? to contend with whom is an act inglorious, and to conquer 
whom, but that they are open and professed foes to the Republic, to 
honesty, to civility, and to all humanity, were as much dishonor as by them 
to be overcome." 

However, Dekker was " industrious " — " To my industrious 
friend," writes E. G. in verses prefixed to " Lanthorn and 
Candlelight." Like its predecessor, this pamphlet was pub- 



138 

lished anonymously as a discovery of the Bellman of London, 
a circumstance of which Rowlands complained when he wrote, 
" The spiteful poet would not set to his name," but in the 
second edition, 1609, reprinted by Grosart, Dekker's name is 
signed to the epistle. This letter is more than usually 
apologetic : 

" Give me leave to lead you by the hand into a Wilderness, where are 
none but Monsters, whose cruelty you need not fear, because I teach the 
way to tame them : ugly they are in shape and devilish in conditions', yet to 
behold them afar off may delight you, and to know their qualities, if ever 
you should come near them, may save you from much danger." 

Dekker would hardly be Dekker if he did not contrive to 
lighten up his subject. The first chapter of " Lanthorn and 
Candlelight " contains an entertaining account of the origin of 
canting, or " peddlers' French," or thieves' dialect, in the con- 
fusion of tongues at the tower of Babel. This is followed by 
a brief canting dictionary with some specimens in prose and 
verse. Chapter two takes us to Hell, which Dekker visits with 
less lightness of spirit than in " News from Hell." The Devil, 
astonished by the ravages made by the Bellman upon his own 
kingdom of hell on earth, sends a messenger to bolster up his 
failing business. The rest of the book is a continuation of the 
exposure of rogues. By far the most interesting to the student 
of literature is the section on Hawking. This explains in detail 
how patrons of letters were cheated by pseudo-pamphleteers, 
who had either patched up something in the semblance of a 
book or stolen a forgotten publication, and had then got printed 
for it as many epistles-dedicatory as they hoped to get patrons 
for that single book.*^ Of all the many modes of cheating, 
this roused Dekker's greatest anger: 

" O sacred Learning ! why dost thou suffer thy seven-leaved tree to be 
plucked by barbarous and most unhallowed hands? Why is thy beautiful 
maiden-body polluted like a strumpet's and prostituted to beastly and slavish 
Ignorance ? . . . You thieves of Wit, cheaters of Art, traitors of schools 
of Learning ; murderers of Scholars. More worthy you are to undergo the 
Roman furca like slaves and to be branded i' th' forehead deeper than they 
that forge testaments to undo orphans : such do but rob children of goods 
that may be lost ; but you rob scholars of their fame which is dearer than 
life." 

" Dekker speaks of this custom in 2 Honest Whore, P., II, 101. 



139 

Many of the other sections are interesting in subject and in 
style ; among them, those on " Gull-Groping or How Gentle- 
men are cheated at Ordinaries," and " Ferreting or the Manner 
of undoing Gentlemen by taking up of commodities." Dekker 
does not hesitate to discuss suburb-houses, and if he is not 
modern enough to put the blame upon the patrons, he at least 
is modern in casting contempt upon landlords who take such 
money. 

At this point, although it is out of the chronological order, 
mention must be made of "A Strange Horse- Race,"*^ which, 
as Grosart says, is "of kin" with the Bellman books. It was 
published in 1613 and was, as we shall see hereafter, avowedly 
written for money only. Although the most curious, it is the 
weakest of the series, as Dekker well knew, for in both prefaces 
he apologizes profusely. Nevertheless, he re-affirms, though 
rather weakly, his moral intent : " In this, as in all other my 
former Nocturnis lucubrationibus, I have strove to feed the 
mind as well as the body," and " the main plot of my building 
is a moral labyrinth." The contents are a medley, as indeed 
the full title indicates : " A Strange Horse-Race, at the end of 
which comes in the Catch-Pole's Banquet; Which done, the 
Devel, falling sick, makes his last will and Testament this pres- 
ent year, 1613." The races are of all sorts, from the chariot 
race of the Romans and fanciful races of nature, to races 
between such semi-morality figures as Prodigality and " Hans- 
thrift"; Niggardliness and Hospitality, the latter a pleasantly 
drawn character; or that between a drunken English knight 
and a Spaniard who is " a temperate and very little feeder and 
no drinker, as all Spaniards are." Among the rogues the 
Bankrout, as in " The Seven Deadly Sins," holds a bad pre- 
eminence. At the end of the book is found the jaunty little 
song, " My Muse that art so merry." 

Towards the beginning of 1609, or as Dekker puts it, " dated 
the I. Ides of the first month of this first great Platonical and 
terrible year, 1609," was published "The Raven's Almanac, 
Foretelling of a Plague, Famine, and Civil War That shall 
happen this present year 1609, not only within this Kingdom 

*- See Cam. Hist. Eng. Lit., TV, 407, for a discussion of this pamphlet. 



140 

of Great Britain, but also in France, Germany, Spain, and 
other parts of Christendom, With certain Remedies, Rules, 
and Receipts how to prevent, or at least to abate the edge of 
these universal Calamities."*^ It would seem that Dekker did 
not edit this medley, for his name does not appear on the title- 
page and is misspelled at the end of the dedication. Perhaps 
the self-named " new English Astrologer " was a little ashamed 
of his performance. Both in the amusing dedication to gulls 
of various sorts, and also in the body of the pamphlet, he ridi- 
cules the astrologers who prophesy what is sure to happen, 
using the language of the professional almanac-maker a little 
mixed with the phraseology of the bestiary and much mixed 
with puns. Now and then he lightly throws overboard the 
whole paraphernalia of the astrologer, as when he remarks of 
December the twelfth: "When the said Sun shall be at his 
greatest South Declination from the Equinoctial line, and so 
forth, with much more such stuff than any mere Englishman 
can understand." Considerably more than half the almanac is 
made up of stories, all well told. One is a licentious story, 
the scene an island belonging to Spain and the source certainly 
foreign. A second tells the story of a usurer who dies miser- 
ably, overreached by the man he had most cheated. Another 
tells the story of a merry cobbler, "who for joy that he mended 
men's broken and corrupted soles, did continually sing, so that 
his shop seemed a very bird-cage, and he, sitting there in his 
foul linen and greasy apron, shewed like a blackbird." But 
the wife had a tongue as well as he, and the story tells how a 
beating reduced her to silence. But Dekker could not leave 
the matter there; accordingly in the fourth story he tells at 
greater length and with much more sympathy "how a woman 
may be safe from a cruel husband." This tale contains "a 
song sung by an old woman in a meadow." 

Of all the plagues which make poor wights 

Unhappy and accurst, 
I think a wicked husband is, 

Next to the Devil, the worst. 
But will young women come to me, 

I'll show them how they shall, 
*^S. R., July 7, 1608. 



141 

With pretty sleights and privy tricks, 

Straight rid them from such thrall. 

The husband frowns, and then his fist 

Lights on her tender cheek. 
And if she do reply a word, 

A staff is not to seek. 
But will," etc. 

A jealous eye the husband bears, 

Then is he out of quiet. 
And she must fit her humor then 

To stead his brain-sick diet. 

Else round about the house she goes. 

The holly wand must walk, 
And though his words be reasonless, 

Yet must she brook his talk. 

Thus men do triumph like to kings. 

And poor wives must obey ; 
And though he be a very fool. 

Yet must he bear the sway. 

Following the mock almanac came " Work for Armorers : 
or the Peace is Broken. Open Wars likely to happen this 
year 1609. God help the poor, the rich can shift." It was 
written when, explains Dekker, play-houses stand empty, their 
flags taken down, the players' comedies are changed to trage- 
dies, and poets walk in melancholy. The only fairly innocent 
mirth is at the Bear Garden, for, continues the cheerful punster, 
" the pied Bull here keeps a-tossing and a-roaring, when the 
Red Bull dares not stir." But he turns away from the folly 
and cruelty of it, with pity in his heart for the " crushed " and 
injured dogs and the bear whipped " till the blood ran down 
his old shoulders " : " methought this whipping of the blind 
bear moved as much pity in my breast towards him as the lead- 
ing of poor starved wretches to the whipping posts in London, 
when they had more need to be relieved with food, ought to 
move the hearts of citizens, though it be the fashion now to 
laugh at the punishment." The bulk of the pamphlet is a sort 
of undramatic prose morality in which Money and Poverty, 
and their various counsellors prepare to make war. The plan 
involves inconsistencies, and the reader is glad when a truce 



142 

is patched up between the leaders. Yet the book is written in 
a lively way, with considerable humor, and there is, as always, 
many an opportunity to look through the half-open door at 
some vividly drawn Jacobean character or custom. 

In 1609 appeared "The Gull's Hornbook," probably Dekker's 
best known prose production, and certainly a masterpiece of 
its kind. It had its suggestion in " Grobianus," a Latin poem 
by Frederick Dedekind, which, writes Mr. McKerrow,** " is for 
the most part merely disgusting ; it is concerned far more with 
such personal matters as the cleanliness and control of the 
body than with behaviour in society." In his general preface, 
Dekker gives the following account of his book : " This Tree 
of Gulls was planted long since, but not taking root, could 
never bear till now. It hath a relish of Grobianism, and tastes 
very strongly of it in the beginning: the reason thereof is, that 
having translated many books of that into English verse, and 
not greatly liking the subject, I altered the shape, and of a 
Dutchman fashioned a mere Englishman." A translation of 
Grobianus into English by R. F., in 1605, may have quickened 
Dekker's natural distaste for the subject. "Grobianism" 
appears in the first three of the eight chapters. 

" The Gull's Hornbook " is the most entertaining and in- 
forming picture of early Jacobean days — a picture of times 
that were bad enough in many ways, but after all, of times 
when everybody wrote poetry and even a gull might be ex- 
pected to produce an epigram or a satire. The chapters un- 
touched by Grobianism advise a Gallant how to behave in 
Paul's Walks, in an Ordinary, in a Play-house, in a Tavern, 
and going home through the city late at night. Crammed with 
minutest detail, and full of wit and humor, they are the result 
of the keen, amused observation of a man that could look 
upon life's little ironies and foibles without any bitterness. 
Yet the brilliant journalist, the historian trained only by genius, 
was also a poet sensitive to the finger-tips ; and this side of his 
nature comes to the surface in the passage I am compelled to 
quote, although it is well known. 

" Present not yourself on the Stage, especially at a new play, until the 
quaking Prologue hath, by rubbing, got color into his cheeks, and is ready to 

** Introduction, The Gull's Hornbook, De la More Press. 



143 

give the trumpets their cue that he's upon point to enter: for then it is 
time, as though you were one of the properties, or that you dropt out of the 
hangings, to creep from behind the arras, with your tripos or three-footed 
stool in one hand, and a teston mounted between a fore-finger and a 
thumb in the other : for if you should bestow your person upon the vulgar 
when the belly of the house is but half full, your apparel is quite eaten up, 
the fashion lost, and the proportion of your body in more danger to be 
devoured than if it were served up in the Counter amongst the Poultry : 
avoid that as you would the bastom. It shall crown you with rich com- 
mendation to laugh aloud in the midst of the most serious and saddest 
scene of the terriblest Tragedy: and to let that clapper, your tongue, be 
tost so high that all the house may ring of it : your lords use it ; your 
knights are apes to the lords, and do so too ; your Inn-a-court-man is zany 
to the knights, and, marry, very scurvily comes likewise limping after it : 
be thou a beagle to them all, and never lin snuffing till you have scented 
them : for by talking and laughing, like a ploughman in a morris, you heap 
Pelion upon Ossa, glory upon glory : As first, all the eyes in the galleries 
will leave walking after the players, and only follow you : the simplest dolt 
in the house snatches up your name, and when he meets you in the streets, 
or that you fall into his hands in the middle of a watch, his word shall be 
taken for you : he'll cry. He's such a gallant, and you pass. Secondly, you 
publish your temperance to the world in that you seem not to resort thither 
to taste vain pleasures with a hungry appetite : but only as a gentleman to 
spend a foolish hour or two, because you can do nothing else : Thirdly, 
you mightily disrelish the audience and disgrace the author : marry, you 
take up, though it be at the worst hand, a strong opinion of your own judg- 
ment, and enforce the poet to take pity of your weakness, and by some 
dedicated sonnet to bring you into a better paradise, only to stop your 
mouth. 

" Now sir, if the writer be a fellow that hath either epigrammed you, or 
hath had a flirt at your mistress, or hath brought either your feather, or 
your red beard, or your little legs, &c., on the stage, you shall disgrace him 
worse than by tossing him in a blanket, or giving him the bastinado in a 
tavern, if, in the middle of his play, be it Pastoral or Comedy, Moral or 
Tragedy, you rise with a screwed and discontented face from your stool to 
be gone : no matter whether the scenes be good or no ; the better they are, 
the worse do you distaste them ; and, being on your feet, sneak not away 
like a coward, but salute all your gentle acquaintances that are spread either 
on the rushes or on stools about you, and draw what troop you can from 
the stage after you : the mimics are beholden to you for allowing them 
elbow room: their poet cries, perhaps, A pox go with you; but care not 
for that, there's no music without frets. 

" Marry, if either the company or indisposition of the weather bind you 
to sit out, my counsel is, then, that you turn plain ape, take up a rush, and 






144 

tickle the earnest ears of your fellow gallants, to make other fools fall 
a-laughing: mew at passionate speeches, blare at merry, find fault with 
the music, whew at the children's action, whistle at the songs. 

" To conclude, hoard up the finest play-scraps you can get, upon which 
your lean wit may most savorly feed, for want of other stuff, when the 
Arcadian and Euphuized gentlewomen have their tongues sharpened to 
set upon you : that quality, next to your shittlecock, is the only furniture 
to a courtier that's but a new beginner and is but in his A B C of 
compliment." 

"The Gull's Hornbook" was not like the Bellman books 
extraneous material collected for a special occasion, but the 
overflow of a full experience and extraordinary powers of 
observation passed through the sieve of a temperament equally 
alive to the absurd and the serious. Ten years before, Dekker 
had amused himself by adding to " Patient Grissill " an ignorant 
gallant, a gull, in the shape of Emulo, and later, in Asinius, we 
notice some of the same characteristics ; in this book we have 
the complete picture, "j 

From the point of view of Dekker's art and personality, no 
prose work possesses more interest than the imperfect book of 
prayers entitled " Four Birds of Noah's Ark," which also 
belongs to 1609. The preface to the reader indicates the scope 
of the four books : 

" Under the wings of the Dove have I put prayers fitting the nature of 
the Dove, that is to say, simple prayers, or such as are fitting the mouths 
of young and the meanest people : and for such blessings as they have 
most need of. The Eagle soars more high, and in his beak beareth up to 
heaven supplications in behalf of Kings and Rulers. The Pelican carrieth 
the figure of our Redeemer on the cross, who shed his blood to nourish us, 
he being the right Pelican: with the drops of which blood have I writ 
prayers against all those deadly and capital sins, to wash out whose foulness 
our Saviour suffered that ignominious death. And lastly, in the spiced 
nest of the Phoenix, in which Bird likewise is figured Christ risen again, 
shalt thou find a book written full of thanks and wishes: of thanks for 
those benefits which grow unto us by Christ's death and resurrection: of 
wishes that he would in divers gifts bestow those blessings upon us." 

It seems only natural that Dekker should have put into the 
most transparent and articulate form the fears and petitions of 
children, prentices, servants, prisoners, and other poor or un- 



145 

protected persons. Very gentle in spirit and in rhythm is this 
book of the Dove ; and the gentleness begins in the explanatory 
note that precedes the prayers : 

" The Dove went out twice ere it could find an olive branch, which was 
the ensign of peace : so our prayers must fly up again and again, and never 
leave beating at the doors of Heaven till they fetch from thence the olive 
branch of God's mercy in sign that we are at peace with him, and that he 
hath pardoned our sins." 

Very moving is the prayer for a child "before he goeth to 
his study, or to school," and equally so that " for a prentice 
going to his labor " ; from the latter I quote : 

" Let me not, O God, go about my business with eye-service ; but sithence 
thou hast ordained that, like poor Joseph, I must enter into the state of a 
servant, so humble my mind that I may perform with cheerful willingness 
whatsoever ray master commands me, and that all his commandments may 
be agreeable to the serving of thee. Bestow upon me thy grace that I may 
deal uprightly with all men, and that I may shew myself to him who is set 
over me a ruler as I another day would desire to have others behave them- 
selves to me. Take away from him that is my master all thoughts of 
cruelty that, like the children of Israel under the subjection of Pharaoh's 
servants, I may not be set to a task above my strength : or if I be, stretch 
thou out my sinews, O God, that I may with unwearied limbs accomplish 
it. Fill my veins with blood that I may go through the hardest labors, 
sithence it is a law set down by thyself that I must earn my bread with the 
sweat of my own brows. Give me courage to begin ; patience to go forward ; 
and ability to finish them. Cleanse my heart, O thou that art the fountain 
of purity, from all falsehood, from all swearing, from all abuse of thy 
sacred Name, from all foul, loose, and unreverend languages." 

Those who accuse Dekker of lack of dignity would do well 
to read the prayers comprised under "The Eagle," especially 
those for the council, the nobility, the church, the judges, and 
the two universities. The thought and diction are equally 
elevated, appropriate and direct. " A prayer to stay the pesti- 
lence" reminds us that Dekker was writing in the midst of 
death. It is full of pity and pain, and there are echoes from 
the Litany in it. 

While " The Pelican " and " The Phoenix " sustain a high 
level, they are more general and less interesting than tlie first 
two books. The former concludes with a prayer for the even- 
ing that is full of beauty. I quote it in full : 
11 



146 

" Thus, O God, am I nearer to old age than I was in the morning, but, 
I fear, not nearer to goodness : for he that strives to do best comes short 
of his duty. The night now stealeth upon me like a thief. O defend me 
from the horrors of it. When I am to lie down in my bed, let me imagine 
I am to lie in my winding sheet : and suffer me not to close mine eyes till 
my soul and I have reckoned and made even for all the offences, which not 
only this day but all the former minutes of my life I have committed against 
thy divine Majesty. Pardon them, O Lord; forgive me my sins, which are 
more infinite than the stars, and more heavy than if mountains lay upon my 
bosom ; but thy mercy and the merits of my Redeemer do I trust in. In his 
name do I sue for pardon. Suffer, O Lord, no unclean thoughts this night 
to pollute my body and soul, but keep my cogitations chaste, and let my 
dreams be like those of innocents and sucking babes. Grant, O Lord, that 
the sun may not go down upon my wrath. But if any man this day hath 
done me wrong, that I may freely and heartily forgive him, as I desire at 
thy hands to be forgiven. Whether I sleep or wake, give thy angels charge 
over me that at what hour soever thou callest me I may like a faithful 
soldier be found ready to encounter death, and to follow the Lamb where- 
soever he goeth." 

Elsewhere I have said that to me it seems that much of 
Dekker's purity and clarity of phrase, at his best, sprang from 
his intimate knowledge of the Bible; in his prayers, biblical 
quotations are so interwoven with his own words as to appear 
a part of the very texture. Of course, if we seek deeper, the 
charm lies in the man himself, in his profoundly religious 
nature, in the temperament of an artist as sensitive to the 
beauty of holiness as to other forms of beauty. He had earlier 
attempted, on several occasions, to express his loyalty to Prot- 
estantism ; but every attempt was a failure, for Dekker had no 
real interest in controversy and no power of invective. The 
gentleness of his genius, wasted in such work, had its way in 
the prayers, which, though essentially dramatic, are permeated 
with personality, not the expression of a temporary mood, 
though it is much to be capable of such a mood, but of a life- 
long fervor of faith and of sympathy with humanity. As a 
work of art, the prayer-book is almost flawless ; it is nearly as 
impassioned as similar collections in Jeremy Taylor's "Holy 
Living," and it is more simple, tender, and unconventional. 



CHAPTER VIII 
1610-1619: Plays; Imprisonment 

We have already seen that about 1609 or i6ioDekker stopped 
writing prose and returned to the theatre, and that the authors 
of "The Roaring Girl" hinted very plainly in 161 1 by the 
motto on their title-page that they were in need of money. The 
same year is marked, it may be said parenthetically, by some 
commendatory verses of no great value, written for Taylor, the 
Water Poet. In 161 2 Dekker's complaint of hard times grew 
still more pronounced : in the dedication of what was probably 
his next play, he wrote : " Knowledge and Reward dwell far 
asunder. Greatness lay once between them. But in his stead 
covetousness now. An ill neighbor, a bad benefactor, no pay- 
master to poets. By this hard housekeeping, or rather, shutting 
up of liberality's doors, merit goes a-begging and learning 
starves. Books had wont to have patrons, and now patrons 
have books. The snufft hat is lighted, consumes that which 
feeds it. A sign the world hath an ill ear when no music is 
good unless it strikes up for nothing. I have sung so, but will 
no more. A hue-and-cry follow his wit that sleeps when sweet 
tunes are sounding. But 'tis now the fashion. Lords look 
well ; knights thank well ; gentlemen promise well ; citizens take 
well ; gulls swear well : but none give well."^ 

In the Prologue to "The Roaring Girl" he or Middleton 
had written, partly, however, to excuse the " meanness " of 
the subject: 

" Tragic passion. 
And such grave stuff is this day out of fashion." 

But of the three remaining plays that belong to the dramatic 
period 1610-1613, to be discussed in this chapter, one is a 
tragedy, if the death of the body and the manifold triumph of 
the soul constitute a tragedy; one is a tragicomedy with very 
little comedy of any sort in it ; and the third is concerned with 
*// It be not Good, P., Ill, 261. 

147 



148 

the strife between human weakness and the powers of evil. 
As the date of the third play is certain, and as the subject and 
some details are connected with Dekker's prose, it may con- 
veniently be considered first. 

The full title is "If It be not Good, The Devil is in it. A 
New Play, as it hath been lately acted, with great applause, by 
the Queen's Majesty's Servants: at the Red Bull. Written 
by Thomas Dekker. Fleeter e si nequeo Superos, Acheronta 
moreho." 1612? It was written after May 14, 1610, for 
Ravaillac, who on that day murdered Henry IV, is a character 
in the epilogue in Hell.^ Moll Cut-Purse is mentioned* as 
" late a sore tormented soul " — " at the Fortune," adds Fleay. 
It was a "new play" in 1612, and finally the dedication was 
composed shortly before "The White Devil" was acted, in 
161 1 or 1612. The date for the writing or the first acting of 
" If It be not Good," then, may be set down as 1611.^ 

The Fortune, to which Dekker had first offered the play, 
had rejected it, probably because it had in stock another play 
on the same subject:" in his kindly and generous recognition 
of the actors, " my loving and loved friends," to whom he dedi- 
cated the play, he writes : " When Fortune, in her blind pride, 
set her foot upon this imperfect building, as scorning the foun- 
dation and workmanship, you gently raised it up on the same 
columns, the frontispiece only a little more garnished."'^ 
Whether this garnishing refers to the prologue in Hell, as 
seems likely,^ for it is a wretched piece of work and bears every 
evidence of hasty writing, or to other changes it is impossible 
to say, the more so as the text has come down to us in a cor- 
rupt state.^ The Prologue, as well as the dedication, inveighs 

* The running title is // This be not a Good Play, the Devil is in it. 
' P., Ill, 354. 

* P., Ill, 352-353. 

® Fleay's argument for 1610 is not convincing. 

* Friar Rush : Fleay, Chr., I, 1 08. Friar Rush and the Proud Woman of 
Antwerp: Harford, 308. 

'P., Ill, 261-262. 

* This is Fleay's opinion. 

' The Lurchall of the main play, as pointed out by Fleay, is usually Grum- 
shall in the introduction : no pains were taken to reconcile the names. On 



149 

against the degenerate taste of theatre-goers and the " rude- 
ness " of the plays then in vogue. But that mood does not 
last, and Dekker proceeds to draw a picture of the true poet. 
"Give me that man," he cries, who, when folly rules and the 
vast rooms of the theatre stand empty, 

" Can call the banished auditor home, and tie 
His ear with golden chains to his melody : 
Can draw with adamantine pen even creatures 
Forg'd out of th' hammer, on tiptoe to reach up, 
And from rare silence clap their brawny hands 
T' applaud what their charm'd soul scarce understands. 
That man give me, whose breast, fill'd by the Muses, 
With raptures into a second them infuses : 
Can give an actor, sorrow, rage, joy, passion. 
Whilst he again, by self-same agitation. 
Commands the hearers, sometimes drawing out tears, 
Then smiles, and fills them both with hopes and fears. 
That man give me : and to be such a one 
Our poet this day strives, or to be none ; 
Lend not him hands for pity, but for merit : 
If he please, he's crown'd ; if not, his fate must bear it." 

The last lines exhibit the writer's usual independence, but in 
the Epilogue, a form of appeal to the audience he rarely em- 
ployed, he intimates that "liberal" applause will be welcome. 
The Epilogue is interesting for other reasons ; besides explain- 
ing the title of the play, it indicates that, in Dekker's concep- 
tion of the matter, a drama was not a form of literature that 
might lightly be thrown off, impromptu, at any time. I quote 
the opening lines : 

" If't be not good, the Devil is in't, they say. 
The Devil was in't : this then is no good play 
By that conclusion ; but hereby is meant. 
If for so many noons and midnights spent 
To reap three hours of mirth, our harvest-seed 
Lies still and rot, the Devil's in't indeed : 
Much Labour, Art, and Wit make up a Play." 



p. 273, a comment of Jovinelli is put into the mouth of Rufman, who has 
not yet entered; on p. 310 a speech of the Sub-friar is given Friar Rush; 
on p. 281 a speech of one of the monks to Shackle-soul, the devil's name 
of Friar Rush. 



150 

In this play Dekker again brings continental folk-lore into 
English drama. His immediate source seems to have been 
" The Pleasant History of Friar Rush,"^" well known in Eng- 
land as early as 1584, which tells the story of a devil sent by 
the Prince of Devils to a rich and dissolute monastery to com- 
plete the corruption of the inmates. The prologue in Hell, 
not borrowed from " Belphegor," as Herford shows, for it 
exists in the source,^^ seems to me, in the violent feebleness 
of its style, to depend upon Dekker 's previous work of that 
sort, especially that essayed in " News from Hell," which was 
imitated from Lucian. As it was probably added only to 
attract the vulgar, it should not be read first by one who wishes 
to enjoy the play. In the main story, aside from the fact that 
Dekker merely hints at the licentiousness that bulks so largely 
in his source, his most important variation from the Friar Rush 
story lies in the fact that his devils attack virtuous persons or 
communities, not those already tainted with vice. " Dekker," 
writes Herford, " is thus brought back by sheer dramatic feel- 
ing to the original [Danish] conception of the story." He trans- 
forms a vicious sub-prior, at odds with the prior in the source, 
into a virtuous old man, who offsets the corruption of the body 
of monks in general and of the prior in particular. He further 
tones down the violence of the story by saving the cook, who 
in the " Pleasant History " is early cast into a kettle of boiling 
water, but in Dekker's version is only driven from the monas- 
tery by false accusation. In spite of these ameliorations, how- 
ever, while the " Pleasant History " ends with repentance and 
salvation, Dekker's story ends for most of the monks in death 
and eternal punishment. 

To the plot centering about Friar Rush, Dekker added two 

"Registered 1567-8. The date of the first extant edition is 1620. Lit- 
erary Relations, 303. Mr. Herford points out that Dekker by inadvertence 
retains the " Lucifer " of the legend instead of the Pluto of his own intro- 
duction in the scene in which the devils report their progress to their master. 

In the discussion of the source and significance of the play I have drawn 
freely from Mr. Herford's book, 308-318. 

^^ It is worth noting that in Lanthorn and Candlelight the devils hold a 
council to devise measures to regain their lapsing domain on earth, and 
finally send out one of their number to visit the world, G., Ill, 205-217. 
Similar material is employed in A Strange Horse-race, G., Ill, 346-350. 



151 

nearly parallel stories, one dealing with the court, the other 
with the business world, or, to be specific, with usurers. The 
first is admirably carried out ; there is a good but inexperienced 
young king supported by two virtuous but not overwise old 
uncles ; he falls a quick prey to the machinations of the clever 
devil Rufman, who is ably seconded by the young courtiers, 
especially the cynical Jovinelli ; but when defeat in battle has 
brought him to the verge of suicide, to which he is urged by 
Rufman, his better soul suddenly awakes to see a heaven above 
the hell that yawns before him, and his kingdom and his bride 
are then restored. 

Much less successful is the third plot. Towards the end it 
is needlessly complicated, and in the whole story there is abso- 
lutely no relief, for the third devil, Lurchall, has little to do 
but sit still and applaud his superior in villainy, Bartervile, the 
merchant and usurer;^- in the first scene in which he appears, 
Lurchall says contentedly to himself : 

" Thou'st found 
A master, who more villany has by heart 
Than thou by rote. See him but play's own part, — 
And thou dost Hell good service. Bartervile, — 
There's in thy name a harvest makes me smile." " 

In " If It be not Good," women have almost no part, and 
there is comparatively little of the humanity that one associates 
with Dekker's characterization. The chief exception is to be 
found in Father Clement, bold to condemn the sin of his supe- 
riors, compassionate of the weary pilgrims, very kindly to the 
cook Scumbroth, despising gold, discreetly holding down his 
head " as fast asleep " in the St. Anthony scene, and finally 
routing the powers of evil by his "holy spells." Scumbroth 
too is at first a genial figure whom Dekker had not the heart 
to damn ; indeed he could not do it consistently, for in spite of 
the depredation wrought upon his life by the devil's gold, poor 
Scumbroth at least made an attempt to save the priory from 

^ Mr. Herford's interpretation of Bartervile seems to me unsustained by 
anything in the play. 

^^ P., Ill, 295. In this plot Dekker uses some of the incidents of the 
story of Hans van Limericke and Joachim the Jew, already told in The 
Raven's Almanac. 



152 

Friar Rush. In the earlier scenes he has something of the 
simpHcity and humor shown by Dekker's other servant clowns. 
That his speech becomes degraded after he has used infernal 
gold is certainly intentional and may be compared with the 
degenerate language spoken by Hircius and Spungius in " The 
Virgin Martyr." Even Friar Rush, at first, has a humorous 
spirit, exhibited in the long grace that enumerates the various 
heavy dishes forbidden to the friars, and in his argument, so 
convincing to his hearers, that " he that feeds well hath a good 
soul." Attractive, too, is the light and lyrical bill of fare prom- 
ised under his management, which includes 

" Syrup of violets and of roses, 
Cowslip salads and kickchoses." 

It may be added that in the St. Anthony scene there is another 
song that, as the singer is one of the tempters, sinks to licen- 
tiousness. 

In spite of the outrageous prologue in hell, this play is one 
of serious intention; its evil spirits are not easily baffled or 
fooled, but, like Harpax in " The Virgin Martyr," are only too 
successful ; even the epilogue in hell, with all its claptrap, con- 
tains some humor that is sufficiently grim. Bartervile's chief 
punishment is to stretch out his hands for his gold, only to 
find that it has become " air, shadows, things imaginary." Even 
the devils rather condemn the sins of the damned than rejoice 
in their fall. Here, as in the strange " Dream " written years 
later, Dekker permits his lost souls to ask the once unanswer- 
able questions : 

" Why for a few sins that are long hence past 

Must I feel torment that shall ever last ? " 
" Why is the devil, 

If man be born good, suffered to make him evil ? " 

Again, there is in this play considerable irony, unrelieved by 
humor or fantasy, that does not exist in Dekker's earlier or 
later plays and that seldom occurs in his prose. Conceived 
in an ironical spirit are the two devils that are Dekker's cre- 
ation, especially Lurchall, who finds on earth a teacher. Pluto 
assumes a virtue in hell superior to that on earth, and Scum- 



153 

broth murmurs, as he watches the devils embrace, " Sure these 
are no Christian devils, they so love one another." In an 
ironical sense too must be taken the speech on the salt tribute.^* 

Those who lay stress upon Dekker's tenderness, interpreting 
that beautiful and rare quality as weakness, should observe 
that he was capable of devising a drama more remarkable for 
power than for sentiment, an almost pitiless indictment of the 
court, the church, and the world of money-dealers, a play in 
which but one wrong-doer is allowed to repent, the rest perish- 
ing body and soul. " For boldly planned and all-embracing 
infernal machinery," writes Herford, " the play has no rival 
in the English drama." It is, to quote again, " the very idea 
afterwards carried out in Goethe's Faust, — the recasting of an 
old devil-story in terms of modern society. The polished 
urbanity of King Alphonso's guest, the ironical serviceableness 
of the merchant's clerk, already at isolated points recall the 
Mephistopheles of Goethe rather than that of Marlowe, and 
assuredly there is no scene in Marlowe's ' Faustus,' — the im- 
mortal opening and close always excepted — at all equal in con- 
ception to Dekker's pictures of the sudden transformation 
under temptation of a court of frail idealists and a convent of 
only half voluntary ascetics." 

But if Dekker showed strength of an unexpected kind in the 
conception of the play and in some scenes, he lacked either the 
time or the ability to execute the greater part of his plan with 
any degree of adequacy. While the verse is not quite so super- 
humanly bad as Swinburne would have us believe, it offers 
few passages of any charm. Perhaps the King's speech at his 
lowest ebb of despair lends itself to quotation as well as any : 

" Fetch me, dear friend, 
An armed pistol, and mouth it at my breast : 
I'll make away myself, and all my sorrows 
Are made away." 

It remains to be said, in the first place, that in the details of 
this play, as well as in some features of the scheme, re-appear 

" P., Ill, 297. There is also an attack upon simony, p. 276, and upon 
the misuse of hospital funds, pp. 274-275. 



154 

elements that belong to the earlier stage: the echo dialogue, 
the pseudo-scholastic argument, the Golden head, the spec- 
tacular burning of the monastery, reminiscent of the catas- 
trophe in " The Jew of Malta " ; in the second place, we find 
what we have learned to expect, — pity for soldiers, for schol- 
ars, for the cheated and deceived, and something that we do 
not expect, — incidental slighting remarks about law, the best 
known of which is spoken by the King's councillor, who has 
put the laws enacted by Parliament into common language, 
and who will not hang them out of sight, 

" Like cobwebs in foul rooms, through which great flies 
Break through ; the less being caught by th' wing there dies." 

When Father Clement finally puts Friar Rush to flight, he 
exorcises him 

" by good men's prayers ; 
The continence of saints, by which as stairs 
They ascend to heaven ; by virgins' chastity ; 
By martyrs' crown'd deaths, which recorded lie 
In silver leaves above," — 

words that may be taken as a sort of introduction to the play 
to be discussed next — " The Virgin Martyr." 

There is no record of the early history of this play, which 
was already old in the first mention of it that has come down 
to us. On October 6, 1620, Sir George Buc, then Master 
of Revels, made a record of the reforming of " The Virgin 
Martyr" for the Red Bull, where the Queen's men were still 
playing. It was registered to print December 7, 1621, and was 
published the following year under the title : " The Virgin 
Martyr, a Tragedy, as it hath been divers times publicly Acted 
with great Applause, by the servants of his Majesty's Revels. 
Written by Phillip Messenger and Thomas Deker." On July 
7, 1624, there was added a new scene that was never published. 
Fleay's guess that this play in its original form was the anony- 
mous "Dioclesian" of the Diary, 1594, which he ascribes to 
Dekker, has nothing to substantiate it.^^ Aside from other 

"The " rounce-robble-hobble," etc. (P., IV, 68), which he considers a 
vestige of primitive date is paralleled by " Bounce go the guns . . . romble. 



155 

considerations, the delicacy of characterization, on the one 
hand, and the vocabulary of Spungius and Hircius on the 
other, are approached by nothing in Dekker's known early 
work. 

Critics are at one in assuming that Dekker and Massinger 
did not work together upon the play. The evidence seems to 
show that when the latter came to revise it, it was still in the 
hands of the Queen's servant, who had presented " If It be 
not Good" after the Fortune had refused it. Since Dekker 
is not known to have written for the theatre during his im- 
prisonment from 1613 to 1619, "The Virgin Martyr" may 
reasonably be assigned to the dramatic period that preceded it. 
Some internal considerations strongly confirm this view. The 
most important lies in its close relations with " If It be not 
Good." Both plays deal with the same kind of material, the 
eternal struggle between the powers of good and evil, and both 
deal with it in the same way. In the first play there are three 
incarnate devils ; in the second there is an incarnate angel as 
well as an incarnate devil, and besides the devil, there are two 
morality figures that likewise make evil seem incarnate. In- 
stead of an old man, good and brave but powerless to rescue 
any besides himself, there is a saintly girl whom sin cannot 
approach, whose eyes are blind to all love but that of Heaven, 
and whose unwavering devotion to that heavenly love brings 
about the salvation of others. Although this play is called a 
tragedy, it is the story of a conquest: the powers of evil are 
beaten, the good prevail. In all this, but especially in the sub- 
stitution of one lovely invincible figure for ineffective virtue, 
Dekker was making an advance or, in other words, " If 
It be not Good " was an unconscious preliminary study for 
" The Virgin Martyr." There are some minor correspond- 

romble, go the waters " of i Honest Whore (P., II, 82) ; and by a passage 
in Marston's Antonio and Mellida (II, i) spoken by Catso : "But was't not 
rare sport at the sea-battle, whilst rounce robble hobble roared from the 
ship sides," etc. Such parodies of Harvey's hexameters might have been 
written at any time, especially by Dekker, who, as pointed out earlier, often 
reverts to the interests of his youth and who always remained on the side 
of Nash. 



156 

ences between the two plays: in both, for example, a ribald 
vocabulary is deliberately put into the mouths of the degraded; 
in " The Virgin Martyr " the British slave" speaks very much 
like the Soldier^'^ in " If It be not Good " ; and Harpax in the 
former play says of the devil, " He's more loving to man than 
man to man is,"^* a speech that may be compared in general 
with the whole spirit of " If It be not Good," and in particular 
with an utterance of Scumbroth already quoted/^ 1612, then, 
the year of the publication of the Friar Rush play, or possibly 
1613, seems to be a probable date. 

The source, pointed out by Koeppel,^*' is a Cologne Mar- 
tyrology of the year 1576, " De Probatis Sanctorum Historiis," 
which contains the story of the persecution of Dorothea by 
Sapritius, the reconversion of two sisters by her persuasion, 
and the scoffing request of Theophilus that she should send 
from Heaven some of the fruit and flowers she had spoken 
of on earth. Dekker invented the hopeless love of Antoninus 
for Dorothea and that of Artemia for Antoninus. He added 
the devil Harpax and the two morality figures, and he de- 
veloped from the mere mention of a boy bearing heavenly 
fruits and flowers the exquisite conception of Dorothea's child- 
servant who reveals to her his angelhood only at the hour of 
her martyrdom. 

It is a great pity that the play has not come down to us 
untouched by Massinger's hand ; yet doubtless for him too the 
subject had an appeal, for though he wrote no drama at all 
similar and created no characters at all comparable with Doro- 
thea and the boy angel, he was interested in the soul's welfare, 
and in " The Maid of Honor " he substituted, at the end, 
devotion to God for devotion to earthly love. In spite of the 
irony of fate that impels some critics to discuss " The Virgin 

'« P., IV, 64. 

" P., Ill, 291. 

" P., IV, 57. 

"To me, the very words of Father Clement, quoted above, p. 154, appear 
to show the direction that Dekker's thoughts were taking. 

^ Quellen-Stiidien zu den Dramen Chapman's, Massinger's, und Ford's. 
Quellen und Forschungen, 1897. See his note p. 83, for an indication that 
Dekker may have known some additional version of the legend. 



157 

Martyr " among his works, Ward is surely right in saying 
that the greater part seems to have been contributed by 
Dekker,^^ adding in the next sentence : " The action is sim- 
pHcity itself; nor is there the slightest attempt at refining upon 
the clear prose of the fable " — good evidence, if it were needed, 
that Dekker was the author of the original plan, with its fine 
climax of Dorothea's finishing her work on earth by rescuing 
from eternal death the crudest of her persecutors.^^ General 
agreement has long assigned to him the most beautiful char- 
acters and poetry, together with the most degraded personages 
with their talk. The pathos of Antoninus' love for Dorothea 
seems to me in his manner, and so does the somewhat ineffect- 
ive violence of the speech of Sapritius. Although the problem 
is complicated by the circumstance that we have no unaided 
Massinger play of about the same date as a basis for com- 
parison, yet the frequent recurrence of Dekker's favorite 
phrases and of his mannerisms of style make it likely that Mas- 
singer's work was mostly revision, not substitution, and that 
the older poet's actual words are still, for the greater part, 
retained. The first act, so highly praised by Coleridge, so even, 
dignified and uninspired, is apparently an exception, for it 
contains fewer evidences of Dekker's hand than any other act. 
Of the rest of the play, Gifford assigns to Dekker all of the 
second act, the prose of the third, and the first scene of the last. 
To this I should add the greater part of the fourth act; clearly 
his are the rather rude talk of Antoninus, first with the doc- 
tor and afterwards with his father, the episode of the British 
slave, the scene in which Spungius, Hircius, and Harpax fig- 
ure, and that in which the two first grow weary in beating 
their mistress, and the greater part of the scene of Dorothea's 
death.^^ Sometimes it is Dekker's fondness for iteration and 
rhyme that help to decide his authorship, as in Angelo's words 
to his mistress under torture : 

'^^ Eng. Dram. Lit., Ill, 12-13. 

"^ This is not Ward's opinion of the fifth act. 

^ Specifically p. 74 to the end of the act. Ward is doubtless right in 
griving to Massinger Dorothea's long speech beginning " Thou fool," p. 73. 
Dekker's Dorothea would not say " Thou fool." 



158 

" There fix thine eye still ; thy glorious crown must come 
Not from soft pleasure, but by martyrdom. 
There fix thine eye still ; when we next do meet, 
Not thorns, but roses, shall bear up thy feet : 
There fix thine eye still " ; 

and as in her dying speech. 

"The distinguishing merit of this tragedy," writes Ward, 
" lies in the grandeur of the conception, which indicates a noble 
ambition to rise above the level of the themes to which the 
English tragedy of the age had accustomed itself and its 
audiences." No doubt he is right in saying that the execution 
fails to equal the conception, but I, at least, feel little inclined 
to cavil at a play that offers one of the most perfect and orig- 
inal scenes in the Elizabethan drama. Every student of poetry 
knows that dialogue of limpid loveliness between Dorothea 
and her servant, the boy-angel ; it has the purity of sentiment 
and the purity of coloring of Era Angelico, and there is not a 
breath to mar its beauty. The sustained gentleness of tone 
and rhythm and the artlessness of phrase remind one of 
Dekker's book of prayers, although these qualities are noticeable 
in smaller compass or less elevated in feeling in some of his 
other plays, and they appear again in " The Witch of Edmon- 
ton." Less fine but very moving is the scene in which Angelo 
returns to earth with the basket of celestial fruits and flowers 
promised by Dorothea, presenting it to Theophilus in language 
as gentle as that he has used in the colloquy with his mistress. 

The prose scenes that have brought so much reproach upon 
Dekker's name must not pass without a word of comment. 
Hircius and Spungius are personifications, as Dekker took 
pains to state ;^* their names represent the two sins most abhor- 
rent to the maiden purity of their mistress, and most in con- 
trast with it. It is probable that as a secondary purpose they 
were intended to contribute humor, and occasionally, only 
occasionally, the humor is legitimate. But they were certainly 
not put into play in a spirit of immorality; the coarseness is 
superficial ; it lies in the vocabulary that these morality figures 
use, not in the situations. Dekker everywhere uses the specific 

^ P., IV, 24. 



159 

and the concrete with remarkable ease, and in this partly lies 
the blame. While unable to see in the speech of these persons 
" the raciness and glow " that Lamb speaks of, I at least marvel 
much at the taste that can tolerate the tone and the situations 
in many of Massinger's plays, and balk at the prose dialogue 
of " The Virgin Martyr," which is as easily forgettable as 
Dorothea and Angelo are memorable. 

The third play that gives evidence of belonging to this brief 
dramatic period is " Match Me in London." It was mentioned 
as an old play by Herbert, August 21, 1623, and had previously 
been licensed by Sir George Buc. It was first printed in 163 1, 
with an epistle-dedicatory to Lodowick Carlell, but presumably 
Dekker did not supervise the editing, which is very badly 
done.^° The title-page tells us something about its history: 
"A Tragicomedy Called Match Me in London. As it hath 
been often Presented ; first, at the Bull in St. John's Street, and 
lately at the Private House in Drury Lane called the Phoenix." 
It will be remembered that " If It be not Good " was played at 
the Bull by the Queen's men in 1612, and that we first hear 
of " The Virgin Martyr " at the same theater. Internal as well 
as external reasons associate this play with the other two, 
especially with " If It be not Good." Like the latter, it con- 
tains allusions to " The Roaring Girl "^^ and to monopolies -^"^ 
and in both Dekker employs a species of hunting the letter that 
he uses nowhere else. In " Match Me in London," we find 
Bilbo saying : " Be attentive. I will show you your Court 
Coranto pace ; it consisteth of five bees and three cees ; you 

^ Before printing the play had undergone revision. There is an isolated 
comedy scene (P., IV, 192-193) in which the names of the characters have 
been changed, for the " Clown " that " enters " becomes Bilbo after his first 
speech, and the " Coxcomb " is not to be found elsewhere in the play under 
that name, though he is doubtless identical with Pacheco, servant of John, 
and therefore " of the Court." In the stage directions of the second scene 
of the third act appears the name of Fuentes, not elsewhere mentioned. 
Revision may be also responsible for the fact that it is not clear how Tor- 
miella was tricked into leaving her home the second time. 

* P., IV, 141. Bilbo. " I am not the roaring girl you take me for." 
Pointed out by Fleay. 

^ Idem, 149. "Give him a Court loaf; stop's mouth with a monopoly." 



160 

borrow of any man, are brave on any terms, brag at any hand 
to pay, bellow at any that demands it, bite at any catchpole that 
fangs you, but carry neither conscience nor coin in your whole 
pockets."-^ With this may be compared Scumbroth's com- 
plaints after he has fallen from the black tree : " But two sins 
have undone me, prodigality and covetousness ; and three pees 
have peppered me : the punk, the pot, and pipe of smoke."^^ 

There is no obvious reason why we should not accept Fleay's 
date, "about 1611,"^" but I incline to push it forward to 1612- 
1613. During the years that followed the publication of " The 
Roaring Girl " with its significant motto, Dekker's financial 
condition had been apparently getting worse, for in 1613, in 
the epistle prefixed to "A Strange Horse-race," he wrote: 
" The title of this book is like a jester's face, set, howsoever he 
draws it, to beget mirth: but his ends are hid to himself and 
those are to get money."^^ The same year Dekker entered 
upon his long imprisonment. These facts speak for themselves. 
I cannot dissociate from them the circumstance that " Match 
Me in London" has throughout an undertone of pain and 
bewilderment ; and its total effect, upon me at least, is a piercing 
sense of the tragedy of life not found elsewhere in Dekker's 
writings except f ragmentarily ; it is most nearly approached 
by the ironical portions of "If It be not Good." Single pas- 
sages hardly illustrate my meaning, but two speeches may be 
quoted; the first is spoken by the injured husband when the 
King asks what will content him, the second when he is driven 
from the church. 

" Nothing, nothing. Why Sir, the powers above cannot please us, and 
can kings, think you? when we are brought forth to the world, we cry and 
bawl as if we were unwilling to be born ; and when we are a-dying, we are 
mad at that." ^^ 

^ Idem, 193. 

™ P., Ill, 329. See also P., IV, 190, where the figure about the law cor- 
responds exactly to the figure already quoted in // It be not Good, P., Ill, 287. 

** Fleay's identification of the play with the anonymous Set at Maw, 1594, 
based upon a few not unusual allusions to games of cards, may be disre- 
garded in view of the other evidence. 

^^G., Ill, 312. 

=■?., IV, 190. 



161 

" Dost thou tell me of thy proclamations, that I am banisht from the Court? 
That Court where I came to thee was none of thine ; it belongs to a King 
that keeps open Court, one that never wrong'd a poor beggar, never took 
away any man's wife unless he sent his pursuivant death for her : oh thou 
daring sacrilegious royal thief, wilt thou rob the Church too as thou hast 
me? thrust me out of that house too in the sanctuary, turn'd devil in a 
crowd of angels ! " ^ 

Somewhat similar in tone are the words of the base old 
father when the King orders him from the Court : 

" Does the bell ring out ? I care not. Your kingdom was a-departing 
too. I had a place in Court for nothing, and if it be gone I can lose 
nothing ; I ha' been like a lord in a play, and that done, my part ends.'"* 

In the conception and carrying out of the two plots of the 
play is perceptible for the first time the influence of the 
romances of Beaumont and Fletcher.^^ How far, in his efforts 
to follow them, Dekker departed from his usual simplicity 
may best be pointed out by giving a rough outline of the play. 
The main plot is concerned with the attempt of a bad King 
of Spain upon the virtue of Tormiella, the young wife of a 
shopkeeper. The scene of action is first Cordova and then 
Seville. The play opens at midnight with Tormiella's sus- 
picious father searching for her, at first alone, then with the 
aid of the suitor whom he would force her to marry; after 
the runaway marriage of the true lovers that very night, there 
follows a scene in the husband's shop, a reconciliation with the 
father, the revengeful lover's discovery of Tormiella, the visit 
to her of the disguised King conducted by an evil woman, the 
repeated wiling away of Tormiella from her home, the com- 
pliance of her father, the jealousy of the Queen who tries 
to make herself kill Tormiella, the strategy by which Cordo- 
lente secures an interview with his wife, the supposed murder 
of the Queen by the King and the supposed madness of Tormi- 
ella, who finally reveals her sanity to the revengeful lover now 
in the employment of the King. The sub-plot involves the 
King's brother and the Admiral, the Queen's father, who has 

^ Idem, 212. 
^ Idem, 215. 

^ Cp. Schelling, Elizabethan Drama, II, 235. 
12 



162 

discovered the intended treason of the former, and who is 
apparently poisoned by him; but the Admiral comes to life 
and is supposedly made the executioner of the traitor. When 
the jealous lover has persuaded the husband to kill Tormiella 
at the altar, and Tormiella to kill the King on their wedding 
night, the final tragedy is averted by thunder and lightning in 
the church: this occasions the repentence of all the sinful 
except the unnatural father; the dead come to life and all 
ends happily. 

Here we have a number of the characteristics that dis- 
tinguish the romances:^® the succession of highly improbable 
events, the mixture of tragic and idyllic matters ending in a 
happy denouement, and the attempt to present a rapid suc- 
cession of telling situations. Varied and violent emotion finds 
expression in short scenes and broken dialogue unusually 
swift and terse ;^^ for example: 

King. Wilt venture for me ? 

Gazetto. To the threshold of hell. 

King. May I trust thee? 

Gaz. Else employ me not. 

King. Did'st ever kill a scorpion ? 

Gaz. Never ; I ha' been stung by one. 

King. Did'st never bait a wild bull ? 

Gaz. That 's the pastime I most love and follow.'' 

Or this : 

Queen. Out, crocodile. (Spurns her.) 

Tormiella. You will not murther me ! 

Queen. I'll cure you of the King's evil. (Draws two knives.) 

Tor, To one woman 

Another should be pitiful ; hear me speak. 
Queen. How dares so base a flower follow my sun 

At's rising to his setting? 
Tor. I follow none. 
Queen. How dar'st thou, serpent, wind about a tree 

That 's mine. 

''See Professor Thorndike's Beaumont and Fletcher, pp. 107, 112-113, 
124-128. 

*'' In the whole play there are but three speeches over fourteen lines long 
and few over ten. 

'^ P., IV, 205. 



163 

Tor. I do not. 

Queen. Or to shake the leaves ? 
Tor. By Heaven, not any. 
Queen. Or once to taste the fruit 

Though thrown into thy lap? If from a harlot 

Prayers ever came, pray, for thou dy'st. 
Tor. Then kill me.^" 

In spite of his attempt to follow up the successes of Beau- 
mont and Fletcher, so superbly carried on by Shakespere it is 
almost superfluous to say that Dekker acquired no particular 
command of the method of the romances, lacking as he did, 
the great constructive skill of his models, especially their 
power to work up to an ingenious climax. Yet the little play 
has for some readers considerable charm. If the King's 
repentance seems insincere, Dekker leaves the father, whose 
old heart was as corrupt in the first scene as in the last, both un- 
repentant and unforgiven. While yielding to influences alien to 
his nature, Dekker retained to some extent his unsophisticated 
way of dealing with his characters, thus partly atoning for 
the extreme improbability of the events. The central figure 
is Tormiella. She is so young, not yet seventeen, and so 
lovable that Bilbo runs away from her father's household, 
where, as he explains, he had had "man servants and maid 
servants under him," simply in order to serve her. Her 
kindliness towards her inferiors, her gentleness and her fierce- 
ness, the soft intensity of her love for Cordolente, are ap- 
pealingly drawn. She belongs to a more protected class than 
"gentle Jane," with finer instincts, and she is not allowed to 
take any but a graceful part in the shop scene in which the 
disguised King bargains for gloves. This business is left to 
Bilbo, shrewd, faithful, and witty servant, at his best in a 
little war of wits, which he "of the City" wages with the 
Coxcomb, or Pacheco " of the Court," at the end of which they 
ceremoniously back away from each other with " dear signior," 
" delicious don." 

Although the execution of the plot is, for Dekker, unusually 

''Idem, 185-186. In both selections I have chosen the part of the scene 
that best illustrates the point, but a glance at almost any page will confirm 
the general statement. 



164 

even and unmarred by crudeness or coarseness, it contains 
few quotable passages of any length. Yet it is surcharged 
with emotion and the characters speak a highly metaphorical 
language, whether the King says of the weeping Tormiella, 

" What 's here ? 
Why is this rose deni'd with a pearled tear 
When the sun shines so warm ? " 

or the bitter Gazetto comments as he catches sight of her, " I 
saw a dove fly by that had eaten carrion; it showed like a 
corrupted churchman " ; or Cordolente complains in his 
homely words, "Oh sir, the smallest letters hurt your eyes 
most, and the least headache which comes by a woman's 
knocking hurts more than a cut to the skull by a man's 
knocking." 

On the twenty-ninth of October, 1612, was presented a 
pageant devised by Dekker for the society of Merchant Taylors 
on the occasion of Sir John Swinerton's becoming Lord Mayor 
of London. It was printed the same year under the title: 
"Troja-Nova Triumphans. London Triumphing, or The 
Solemn, Magnificent, and Memorable Receiving of that worthy 
Gentleman, Sir John Swinerton, Knight, into the City of Lon- 
don, after his Return from taking the Oath of Mayoralty at 
Westminster, on the Morrow next after Simon and Jude's day, 
being the 29 of October, 1612." There is an epistle-dedi- 
catory to the Mayor, in which Dekker, in his usual way, ex- 
plains that while the " colors of this piece " are his own, the 
cost was borne by the Merchant Taylors : " to which nothing 
was wanting that could be had and everything had that was 
required." In the general introduction, Dekker speaks at 
some length of "our best-to-be-beloved friends, the Noblest 
strangers," meaning Frederick, Count Palatine of the Rhine, 
and his retinue. There were shows by water as well as by 
land, but, writes Dekker rather scornfully at the end of the 
piece, "Apollo having no hand in them, I suffer them to die 
by that which fed them; that is to say, powder and smoke. 
Their thunder according to the old gally-foist-fashion was too 
loud for any of the Nine Muses to be bidden by it." He 
mentions with pride the four " living beasts " upon which his 



165 

Tritons sat, not creations of painted cloth and brown paper but 
living creatures quaintly disguised " like the natural fishes, of 
purpose to avoid the trouble and pestering of porters, who 
with much noise and little comeliness are every year most 
unnecessarily employed." The verse does not require much 
comment: there is a welcome song with a well-managed re- 
frain, a good phrase about Rumour and the " repercussive 
sounding " of her echoes, and some excellent democratic advice 
for the new Mayor. 

The year 1613 is marked by the publication of "A Strange 
Horse-Race," already noticed. This must have been hack- 
work indeed, for aside from the contents which proclaim its 
character and the confession that its purpose was " to get 
money," Dekker hints that the book has been edited: "Yet 
the picture hath lost some of the colors I gave it."*" And 
although the two prefaces contain a number of such sayings 
as, " It can be no shame to gather a violet growing close to the 
ground," or " The Titles of Books are like painted chimneys in 
great country-houses, make a show afar ofif, and catch 
travellers' eyes " ; yet both are apologetic, — " a homely piece 
of work, neither so good as you deserve, nor so rich as I do 
wish it"; "bear with the hard-favouredness of the title"; and 
he closes the epistle to the Understanders with an abruptness 
and a note of strain and fatigue very unlike his usual easy 
" farewell " to his readers, and nowhere observable till now. 

In 1 61 3 began the real tragedy of Dekker's life, when as 
a climax to his money troubles he was thrown into the King's 
Bench Prison. Not all the independence of his spirit or the 
toil of his pen saved him from suffering much of the pain he 
had described with such sympathy some seven years earlier. 
In spite of the quiet dignity of his letters written in prison and 
the epigrammatic reserve of the prose also written there, we 
know from another source that he felt all the anguish that the 
heart of a poet could feel in such surroundings, not merely 
physical but the far cruder anguish of imagination, for in the 
" Dream " of Heaven and Hell that is the one poetic relic of 
those seven years, torment, horror, pain have a larger part than 
joy and rapture. 

«G., 111,310. 



166 

When Dekker entered the prison walls, he was about forty- 
one years old. Neither letters nor personal utterance con- 
nected with the " Dream " mention wife or child. Of all the 
friends that might conceivably have come to his aid, we know 
of but one that did so. There may have been others, but no 
similar accident has preserved the record for us. This friend 
was Edward Alleyn, Henslowe's son-in-law and partner, a 
famous actor of majestic parts, the crowning act of whose life 
was the founding of Dulwich College — " College of God's 
gift," as he preferred to say. Such philanthrophy, designed to 
aid the destitute and educate the poor, was of the sort to rouse 
Dekker's keenest enthusiasm and in prison he set to work upon 
a poem to commemorate the College and its founder. Perhaps 
the consecration of the College chapel on the first of Septem- 
ber, 1616, was the occasion that called forth his poem, for the 
letter with which it was enclosed is dated eleven days later. 
For personal reasons, it is a pity that the verses have not come 
down to us, but possibly the poet expressed in " The Wonder 
of a Kingdom" a more eloquent eulogy of "God's gift" than 
he could put into an occasional poem. Fortunately the letter 
that accompanied the poem has been preserved in the archives 
of Dulwich College. 

"To my worthy and wor"-freind' Edw. Allin, Esquier, at his house at 
Dullidge. 

S' 

Out of that respect w*^"" I ever caryed to yo' Worth, (now heightned by 
a Pillar of yo"" owne erecting) doe I send theis poore testimonies of a more 
rich Affection. I am glad (yf I bee the First) that I am the first to Conse- 
crate to Memory, (yf at least you so embrace it) So noble and pious a 
Work, as This, yo"" last and worthiest is. A passionate desire of expressing 
gladnes to See Goodnes so well delivered having bin long in labour in the 
world made mee thus far to venture. And it best becomes mee to Sing 
any thing in praise of Charity, because, albeit I have felt few handes warme 
thorough that complexion, yett imprisonment may make me long for them. 
Yf anything in my Eulogium (or Praise) of yo" and yo"" noble Act bee 
offensive, lett it be excused because I live amongst the Gothes and Vandalls, 
where Barbarousnes is predominant. Accept my will howsoever And mee 
Ready to doe yo" any service 

Tho. Dekker. 
King's Bench Sept 12. 1616."*^ 

** J. P. Collier, Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, Shak. Soc. (1841), 131. 



167 

Alleyn soon sent assistance of some sort to Dekker, for an 
obviously later letter, undated and without the address, reads 
as follows: 

I give you thanks for the last remembrance of your love. I write nowe, 
not poetically, but as an orrator, not by waye of declamation, but by peti- 
tion, that you would be pleased, upon my lovinge lynes, to receave a yong 
man (sonn to a worthie yeoman of Kent here prisoner) able by his owne 
meanes to mayntayne himselfe, whose fortunes will answere itt. Hee is a 
yonge man lovinge you, beinge of your name, and desires no greater hap- 
pines than to depend upon [you]. You shall doe mee much honor if you 
thinke him fitt to serve you as a servant, and him much love, because of 
your name, to receave. The yonge man is of good parts, both of bodie and 
mynd. I knowe you respect such a one, and I would not (upon that repu- 
tation I hold with you) offer a servant to bee unworthie of your attendance. 
If you please to receave him upon my commendation and your owne tryall, 
I shall thinck my selfe beholden to you, and you, as I hope, no waye repent 
the receavinge of such a servant of your owne name. Soe I rest 

Your lovinge freind 

Tho. Dekker."« 

Comment upon these letters is hardly necessary. Yet how 
characteristic they are! the first "passionate" in its praise of 
one of the finer forms of charity, the second illuminating a 
practical and careful side of Dekker's proverbial kindhearted- 
ness that we have little chance elsewhere to observe. Char- 
acteristic too is the appropriate little apology for anything that 
may be " offensive in his poem," and the reserve with which 
he refers to the discomforts of his situation. 

Dekker was in prison for about seven years ; his own words 
leave no doubt upon the question: 

" Out of a long sleep, which for almost seven years together, seized all 
my senses, drowning them in a deep Lethe of forgetfulness and burying me 
to the world in the lowest grave of oblivion : meeting in that drowsy voyage 
with nothing but frightful apparitions by reason, as now I guess, of the 
place in which I lay, being a cave strongly shut up by most devilish and 
dreadful enchantments, I did at last fall into a dream, which presented to 
my waking soul infinite pleasures commix'd with inutterable horrors."^ 

He mentions the same period of years in the epistle to 

*' Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, i86. 

'^To the Reader, prefixed to Dekker, his Dream, G., Ill, ii. 



168 

Endymion Porter.** These years might have been among the 
most productive of Dekker's lifetime; they were just preceded 
by a group of plays that in all probability included " The Virgin 
Martyr " ; they were followed by another group represented by 
"The Witch of Edmonton." When we think of what might 
have filled that interval, pity for the poet is almost lost in 
pity for ourselves. Yet he was not wholly idle during these 
years. We do not know whether he tried to write plays. 
Besides the lost poem sent to Alleyn, there was another called 
"The Artillery Garden," a patriotic effusion, dated 1616. 
New editions of " i Honest Whore" were called for in 1615 
and in 1616, and "The Shoemaker's Holiday" was reprinted 
in 1618. More important was a new version of "Lanthorn 
and Candlelight." This had already run through four editions, 
the last, in 1612, under the following title, in part : " O per se O, 
or a New Cryer of Lanthorn and Candlelight. Being an addi- 
tion or Lengthening of the Bellman's Second Night-walk. In 
which are discovered those Villanies which the Bellman, be- 
cause he went i'th dark, could not see: now laid open to the 
world." It retained the preface of 1609 ^^^ added some new 
material, including the canting song that gives it the first 
member of its title. The issue of 1616 has a slightly different 
title, which I give in full : " Villanies discovered by Lanthorn 
and Candlelight and the Help of a New Cryer called O per 
se O. Being an addition to the Bellman's Second Night-walk : 
and laying open to the world of those abuses which the Bell- 
man, because he went i'th dark, could not see. With Canting 
Songs and other new conceits never before Printed. Newly 
corrected and enlarged by the Author."*^ The preface is 

** G., Ill, 7. The oft-quoted remark of Oldys reads, "From 1613 to 1616 
and I know not how much longer." 

** I have not seen this edition ; but there is in the British Museum a copy 
of the 1612 edition, which has on the fly-leaf preceding the title-page a note 
by the former owner, Mr. Heber, from which I make the following extracts: 
"Another edition of this book was printed for John Busby in 1616 intitled 
' Villanies discovered by Lanthorne and Candle-light, & the help of a new 
cryer called O per se O,' etc. On comparing it with the present one, I find 
it is increased by the addition of a whole section ' Of a Prison ' occupying 
6 chapters. . . . Ed. 1620 is an exact reprint of 1616." 

I have used the edition of 1620. There is internal evidence that the 



169 

altered to permit the author to say, still keeping the figure of 
warring against rogues, " To furnish this army the better with 
soldiers have I opened a prison, out of which what troops 
issue and how practised in discipline, let but a drum beat to 
call up the rear; and thou shalt easily in one light skirmish 
know of what mettle they are." This promise is fulfilled by 
the insertion of a new section entitled " Of a Prison," made 
up of six chapters under the headings : Certain Discoveries of 
a Prison by way of Essays and Characters, written by a 
Prisoner; Of Prisoners; Of Creditors; Of Choice of Com- 
pany in Prison ; Of Visitants ; Of Jailors. 

Now one of Dekker's fellow prisoners in Kings' Bench 
Prison in 1617-1618 was Geffray Mynshul, of whom nothing 
is known except what is revealed in his one well-known 
volume called " Essays and Characters of a Prison and Prison- 
ers," published in 1618 while he was still in confinement for 
debt. In this book he shows such keen appreciation of the 
prison tract of his companion in misfortune as not only to 
discuss the same subjects under similar titles and with but 
one exception in the same order, but also to borrow whole 
passages without change of figure or phrase.'*® The last third 
of the book which corresponds to nothing in " Villanies Dis- 
covered" is full of Dekker's favorite expressions or special 
ways of dealing with a subject, and the first of the three 
epistles, which is addressed to the " Young Gentlemen of 
Gray's Inn," though signed G. M., is in Dekker's liveliest 
manner, embellished with characteristic puns and pet figures.*^ 
As far as a distinction can be drawn, the essays avowedly by 
Dekker employ a style, that is rather more brief, pointed, 

additions of 1616 remained unchanged, for Dekker speaks of his having 
made " more than a three years' voyage " to " these infortunate islands." 

*• For parallel passages proving this statement I must refer to an article, 
Geffray Mynshul and Thomas Dekker to be printed in The Journal of 
English and Germanic Philology. 

"The wording of this epistle, dated June 6, 1618, indicates (1) that it 
was written for a second edition ; (2) that the first edition was anonymous. 
The second epistle, dated January 27, 1617, speaks of the book as the 
author's " first-born " and is signed with Mynshul's name in full. 

The mystery of Mynshul's method of using Dekker's material I shall not 
try to solve here. 



170 

abhoristic, couched in shorter sentences, and the tone is, on 
the whole, rather more Christian, the chapter on jailors, for 
example, being little more than an attempt to account for their 
" crabbedness " by the character of their occupation. Dekker 
allowed his section to remain in the 1620 edition, but when, in 
1632, he brought out the book under a new name with changes, 
he replaced it by another prison-picture more carefully worked 
up and better integrated with the scheme of the pamphlet. 

Since the portions of " Villanies Discovered " that Mynshul 
did not employ are not readily accessible, let Dekker speak for 
himself, first in an apology for his work: 

" I make not an orchard but a private walk or rather a small garden-plot 
set with pot-herbs for the kitchen. The which I write is not a book, but 
a mere rhapsody of mine own disturbed cogitations. This fruit is no tree 
but a young plant new-budded, from whose tender branches thus much I 
gather : That imprisonment is a distillation, for at one and the same lymbec 
do we draw forth the bitter waters of men's oppression with our own sor- 
rows and the sweet waters of patience if we can have the stomach to 
bear them."^* 

Passing over a contrast between the young and the old man 
in prison, I quote again from the same chapter : 

" Art thou full of money in prison ? Thou art a ship fraught full of wines 
in a tempest ; it makes the Master Pilot and our*' owner drunk, and then 
all is cast away. Avoid these draughts ; for riot in a prison is dancing 
in shipwrack ; it is blasphemy in thunder, and cursing in a time of pesti- 
lence. The name of a ' Good Fellow ' is thereby gotten. But thou payest 
too dear to a Lapland Witch for a knot full of wind. The silver here 
saved is to thy wife a dowry, to thy children portions, to thyself a revenue. 
Prodigal expense in a jail is to call for more wine in a tavern when thou 
canst not stand." 

In the chapter on prisoners, the philosophy of Shadow and 
Babulo re-appears: 

" As for wants, hadst thou all things in the world, thou wouldst wish 
more, and lack much more than thou wishest for : no king hath always 
content, and no poor man is ever sad. . . . What want dost thou grieve at? 
It is no other sun shines on thee but the same ; no other air breathes in thy 
face but the same ; no other earth bears thee but the same, and in the same 

*" Ch. XI, unpaged. 
"Her? 



171 

shalt thou be buried. That mother will never change her love ; none in this 
portion are disinherited for bastards. But art thou in prison and do friends 
forsake thee ; yet do not thou forsake thyself : the farther they fly from thee, 
the closer stick thou to thine own guard. Lie in an unwholesome bed, foul 
sheets, and with a loathsome bedfellow ; there will be a lodging one day for 
thee where thou shalt have no cause to complain of these abuses. Art thou 
clapt in irons and thrown currishly into a dungeon out of which the sun is 
shut : Care not ; mourn not. There is an eye that can pierce through locks 
and doors of iron to look upon and pity thee. And a hand which, without 
bribing the frozen palm of a jailor, can turn all keys, and through the 
narrowest grate can put in bread of comfort to feed thee whilst thou art 
drinking the waters of thine own affliction." 

The chapter on creditors, while it opens with praise for the 
merciful, is chiefly an indictment of the merciless creditor 
written for the most part in a grave and reserved manner. 
I quote a single passage: 

" I have heard of some pirates who carrying in their ships the rich vessels 
and vestments of the Church, broken and cut in pieces to make money of 
them : a storm hath risen and within eyesight of shore ship and men have 
been swallowed up in the sea : a quick and just trial for such thieves ; 
distroyers of temples never die but by such vengeance. I protest before 
my Maker, I would not in scorn strike the picture of Christ, break in 
pieces the image of a holy martyr, no, nor spoil, or so much as deface the 
monumental grave of mine enemy. But more than sacrilege dost thou 
commit that ruinest a temple in which thy builder dwells. And how many 
of these temples dost thou lay flat with the earth in one year? nay, perhaps 
in one fatal term."*' 

The " choice of company in prison " must have presented 
problems. Yet, writes Dekker: 

" Society is the string at which the life of man hangs ; without it is no 
music ; two in this make but an unison. Adam had his Eve. And every 
son of Adam hath a brother whom he loves." . . . Since therefore thy com- 
panion must of necessity grow on the same tree with thee, it is fit he should 
be of the same color and taste, of which thou thyself art. Let him be like 
a die, even, square, smooth, and true, to run, so near as thou canst, neither 
higher nor lower than thou that art to run with him. If his fortunes be 
above thine, yet in the carriage of thy mind, lift it up to a height to equal 

*" The fine passage that follows is exactly reproduced by Mynshul. See 
Essayes and Characters (1821), published by Ballantyne and Co., p. 30: 
" Thou takest," etc. 

" So far as in Mynshul, 38. 



172 

his fortunes. Is he bad whom thou takest by the hand? Do thy best to 
make him good. Is he good? be thou ashamed to be otherwise. Let him 
have some learning ; he will be unto thee a winged hour-glass to send 
away the minutes of adversity merrily. Or if thou canst not get one with 
learning, be sure he comes furnished with wit ; his tongue will be a sweet 
chime to rock thy cares and his own asleep. If he hath both wit and 
learning and yet want honesty, venture not, in a sea so dangerous, with 
him. . . . Lean not to a willow that bows every way nor lie in a nest 
where a swallow builds. It is a chattering bird and tells abroad what is 
done at home. And no man, I think, would dwell in a house full of nothing 
but windows for every eye to spy what he is doing." 

Of " visitants "°- Dekker says : " They that cheer up a pris- 
oner but with their sight are robin-redbreasts that bring straws 
in their bills to cover a dead man in extremity ; such acquaint- 
ances grow like strawberries in a barren country: you shall 
hardly in a day gather a handful."^^ He follows up this reflec- 
tion with some excellent advice to the prisoner about borrow- 
ing money from his friends : " Let thy pen neither dig the mine 
too often nor in too many places." The chapter concludes 
abruptly: "How quickly is this maze of friends trodden out? 
Why should I wind any more upon this bottom when a whole 
kingdom can scarce afford stuff to do it? Of such pearl 'tis 
hard to make a bracelet to go about a man's arm; and there- 
fore till I find a shell full of them, I will string no more." 

The final chapter includes a sort of justification of the laws 
against debtors, an explanation of the unkindness of jailors, 
and some advice to prisoners who "go abroad" with their 
keepers. I quote some illustrative passages: 

" To keep the sick from the sound were prisons invented, for a man in 
debt hath the sickness of the law upon him. If creditors had not iron nets 
to fish for their money, all men in the world would still borrow but never 
pay. . . . He that keeps a prison walks continually in a whirlwind and 
would lose his very cloak from his back, clap he not it close to his body. 
He must struggle and wrestle and blow, and all little enough to get through, 
and shall be sure evermore to be in a cold sweat. It is no wonder there- 
fore if an inclination born with innated smoothness warp here and wax 
crabbed. He that sails to the Indies must look to be sunburned ; and he 
that lives amongst the Goths and Vandals will smell of their hard condi- 
tions. . . . The prisoner cries out, he lies upon an ill bed; but upon what 

« Ch. XV. 

"^ The same figures are found, separated, in Mynshul, 46. 



173 

bed sleeps his keeper? I think he sleeps upon none: I think he can not 
sleep : for his pillow is not stuflft with feathers but with fears. Every pris- 
oner sinks under the weight of his own debts, but the keeper feels the 
burden of all." 

As the passage about going forth with a keeper is, almost to 
the last syllable, reproduced by Mynshul,^^ it need not be quoted 
here, but we may remind ourselves in passing that imprison- 
ment for debt permitted visits to the outer world, and that 
Dekker's confinement may have been thus relieved whenever 
his purse allowed so heavy a tax. 

There still remains to consider the rugged, half -grotesque, 
half-terrible poem entitled " Dekker His Dream. In which, 
being wrapt with a poetical enthusiasm, the great volumes of 
Heaven and Hell were opened, in which he read many wonder- 
ful things." It was registered to print October ii, 1619, and 
published the followng year. The title-page is provided with 
a woodcut representing a man with mustachioes and pointed 
beard sleeping on a canopied bed. Halliwell and Grosart think 
there is no doubt that this picture is a genuine likeness of the 
poet. The epistle is addressed to Endymion Porter. Very 
much can be read between the lines, with their bald opening, 
devoid of compliment, their veiled personal allusion and their 
religious fervor: 

" If you ask why from the heaps of men I pick out you only to be 
that mums ahaenus which must defend me, let me tell you — what you know 
already — that books are like the Hungarians in Paul's, who have a privilege 
to hold out their Turkish history for any one to read. They beg nothing, 
the texted pasteboard talks all ; and if nothing be given, nothing is spoken, 
but God knows what they think. If you are angry that I thrust into your 
hands a subject of this nature, O good sir, take me thus far into your 
pardon : that it was impossible for me to beget a better : for the bed on 
which seven years I lay dreaming was filled with thorns instead of feathers ; 
my pillow, a rugged flint ; my chamber-fellows — sorrows that day and 
night kept me company — the very or worse than the very Infernal Furies. 
Besides, I herein imitate the most courtly revellings ; for if lords be in 
the grand masque, in the anti-masque are players : so in these of mine, 
though the devil be in the one, God is in the other, nay in both. What I 
send you may perhaps seem bitter, yet it is wholesome ; your best physic 
is not a julep; sweet sauces leave rotten bodies. There is a Hell named 

"PP- 55-56, beginning "If thou walkest abroad." 



174 

in our creed, and a Heaven ; and the Hell comes before : if we look not into 
the first, we shall never live in the last. Our tossing up and down here is 
the sea, but the land of angels is our shore. Sail so long as we can bear 
up, through honors, riches, pleasures, and all the sensual billows of the 
world ; yet there is one harbor to put in at ; and safely to arrive there is 
all the hardness, all the happiness. Books are pilots in such voyages : 
would mine were but one point of the compass for any man to steer well by." 

The epistle closes with a would-be humorous attempt to 
keep up the figure used at the beginning: "If I hold the pen 
longer in my hand, I shall fall asleep again. But howsoever 
I wake or have mine eyes closed, I rest," etc. 

Although the poem seems to me chiefly interesting as indica- 
tive of Dekker's unhappiness in prison and his pre-occupation 
with "the star-chamber of Heaven" and the "jails of Hell," 
yet it deserves more notice than it has received, for, in spite 
of its rough versification and a phraseology that is often inade- 
quate, its scheme is large and not seldom imaginative. It em- 
braces the destruction of the world, the last judgment, the joys 
of the blest, and at great length the pains of hell. The frame- 
work is a dream, waking from which the poet cries, 

" Yet my heart panted and my hair turn'd white 
More through the ghastly objects of this night 
Than with the snow of age." 

There are interludes of prose and a marginal gloss, mostly 
explanatory and quoting as authorities the Bible, the Fathers, 
and the classics. Hell combines classical and biblical features, 
and Dekker's tenderness does not include the tormented spirits. 
Yet towards the end there is a dramatic monologue, written 
with considerable sympathy, in which a lost soul that had lived 
but thirty years on earth and had loved learning gives voice to 
the old complaint that finite sin should be punished with infinite 
pain. He accuses Adam, "man's master thief," but envies 
him his earthly happiness : 

" He lost a garden but an orchard found, 
Wall'd in with seas, with sun-beams compass'd round ; " 

and especially the gift of Eve : 

" A woman, in whose face more beauties shone 
Than all the beauties after made in one " : 



175 

and complains, as he compares his own lot : 

" God's holy hunger though it oft did kill me 
God's holy banquet yet did never fill me." 

The whole passage is interesting and in some ways recalls the 
Earl's soliloquy in "Westward Ho." 

In the account of the " signs before the last day," the follow- 
ing lines are quotable : 

" The father stabb'd the son, the son the brother ; 
Man was not man till he destroyed another " ; 

and space may be permitted for a few others on the torment 
of wind-tossed spirits : 

" Here I beheld, methought, souls, scarecrow-like, 
Some bound, some hang by th' heels, whose heads did strike 
The icy-knobbed roof, toss'd to and fro 
By gusts implacable, able down to throw 
Rampires of brass ; which still beat out the brains 
And still renewed them with plangiferous pains " ; 

and for 

" The hyperborean wind, whose rough hand flings 
Mountains for snowballs," 

and finally for such a phrase as 

" the Egyptian 
Caliginous black vapor." 

But the poet we know best is not here; even the joys of the 
redeemed are described without charm. In the account of 
Christ's sufferings, however, there is a lyrical and intimate note 
that makes one feel again that Dekker had a staff of comfort to 
lean upon in his dark hour. I quote three couplets with the 
biblical references : 

" That face, whose picture might have ransom'd kings, 
Yet put up spettings, baffulings, buffetings. 

Esa. so. Jerem. 3. Math. 26. Mark 14. Luk. 22. 
That head which could a crown of stars have worn. 
Yet spitefully was wrench'd with wreaths of thorn. 

Math. 27. Mark 15. John 19. 



176 



That body, scourg'd and torn with many a wound 
That his dear blood, like balm, might leave us sound. 
Luk. 23. Psal. 129. Zach. 13." 

This poem contains the familiar pity for wounded soldiers, 
and a passage in which one possibly can read hurt pride and 
indignation : 

" Or when thin, pale-cheek'd scholars held but forth 
Their thread-bare arms, and did beseech their worth 
To pity hapless learning once so much 
As not to see her beg : no, they 'd not touch 
A poor book's cover though within it lay 
Their soul's wealth." 

Yet whatever may have been Dekker's sufferings and priva- 
tions in prison, and they must have been great to have so nearly 
stopped that long industrious pen, and keenly felt, for, as he 
wrote in his early picture of a prisoner, " Calamity [is] most 
irksome to the gentle nature," the man was guarded from the 
worst effects of misfortune by something childlike and sweet 
in his character, and neither despair nor cynicism, not even bit- 
terness in any deep sense, was among his companions in that 
" cave " of horrors. 



CHAPTER IX 
The Last Years 

Dekker was set free in 1619, and by January of the following 
year he was once more established in the theatrical world. It 
was not the same world. Two of the poet-dramatists had 
died, the greatest, and the one who perhaps stood next to the 
greatest. Dekker's former enemy was about then setting forth 
his opinions of matters and persons in a quarter where they 
were received only too hospitably for the good name of either 
guest or host. His former friend Marston, playwright become 
priest, was now reading the service in Christchurch, Hamp- 
shire. Middleton had turned from debased comedy to powerful 
but debased tragedy and was occupying intervals with the devis- 
ing of city pageants. Webster was not writing plays in 1620. 
Heywood was pursuing the industrious and even tenor of his 
way that led, if we can trust his word, to two hundred and 
twenty dramas. With a productiveness too gay for so prosaic a 
term as industry, Fletcher was pouring forth play after play 
as if dimly forewarned that he had but five years to live. 
Among Fletcher's collaborators was Massinger, who, on the 
title-page of "The Virgin Martyr" two years later first saw 
his own name in print. John Ford was wasting his energies 
on a moral treatise, needing, it may be, the impulse of another 
mind to set him about the true business of his life. John Day, 
too, Dekker's early collaborator and friend, had not been writ- 
ing plays for some years. Perhaps it is not an accidental coin- 
cidence that both Ford and Day felt the renewed desire to write 
for the stage when they began to work with Dekker. Cer- 
tainly, so far as we have opportunity to judge, the genial poet- 
journalist was still the leading spirit, as he seems to have been 
in every single case of his collaboration with others that has 
come down to us. 

The last period of Dekker's dramatic activity covered five 
years. It includes six known plays, two collaborated with 
13 177 



178 

Day: "The Life and Death of Guy of Warwick," registered 
to print January 15, 1620, but apparently never published, and 
"A French Comedy of the Bellman of Paris," licensed to act 
July 30, 1623, for the company at the Red Bull j'^ three with 
Ford, first "The Witch of Edmonton," then "The Fairy 
Knight,"^ licensed June 11, 1624, as a new play for the Prince's 
company at the Red Bull, and finally " The Bristow Merchant," 
licensed October 22, 1624, for the Palsgrave's men at the For- 
tune. The sixth play, " The Wonder of a Kingdom," seems in 
its present form to be Dekker's work alone. At this point may 
as well be mentioned two other plays, whose loss we owe to 
Warburton's incredible carelessness : " Jocundo and Astolfo " 
and " The King of Swedland," both registered as Dekker's on 
June 29, 1660. The second of these plays would seem to be- 
long to this decade rather than to an earlier. It is very unfor- 
tunate that but two of these eight plays have come down to us ; 
for although the period is sometimes absurdly labeled as one of 
decadence and of revamping old plays, it is commonly agreed 
that to Dekker "The Witch of Edmonton" owes much of its 
beauty of characterization and its intelligent humanity. The 
fact that the lost plays were not printed proves nothing as to 
their value, for the authors did not print the play last named. 
It will be recalled that Dekker apparently left to others the 
printing of plays upon which he had merely collaborated, and 
that Ford did not publish his refashioning of "The Sun's 
Darling," although it was a court play, and "while the stage 
flourisht . . . lived by the breath of general applauses." 

The full title of the first play on which Dekker and Ford 
worked together runs as follows : " The Witch of Edmonton : a 
known true Story. Composed into a Tragi-comedy by divers 
well-esteemed Poets; William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, John 
Ford, etc. Acted by the Prince's Servants, often at the Cockpit 
in Drury Lane, once at Court, with singular applause. Never 
printed till now. 1658." It was written in 1621 between April 
27, when the account of the trial of Mother Sawyer was regis- 

* Fleay : for the Revels, which then dissolved, and the play passed to the 
Prince's players at the Curtain. 
' Fleay queries Huon of Bordeaux, then an old play. 



179 

tered to print, and December 29, when it was performed at 
Whitehall by the Prince's men.^ 

The name of the Witch, her compact with the Devil in the 
guise of a black dog, and her fate, together with some hints 
as to her previous history, were derived from " The Wonderful 
Discovery of Elizabeth Sawyer, a Witch, late of Edmonton, 
her Conviction and Condemnation and Death. Together with 
the relation of the Devil's Access to her and their Conference 
together. Written by Henry Goodcole, Minister of the Word 
of God, and her Continual Visitor in the Gaol of Newgate. 
Published by Authority."'* But the minister of the gospel had 
less pity and less knowledge of the human heart than the play- 
wright, who in a few brief powerful scenes shows us how the 
deformed ignorant old woman, beaten, abused and hounded on 
by her superstitious neighbors, goes wild with fury, and giving 
herself up to evil passions, becomes that which she is suspected 
of being. While it was no part of Dekker's purpose to an- 
nounce his belief or disbelief in the power of witches to use 
the magic of hell, his intention to lay upon cruelty the chief 
guilt in the process of witch-making is made perfectly clear in 
the opening speech of Mother Sawyer : 

" And why on me ? Why should the envious world 
Throw all their scandalous malice upon me? 
'Cause I am poor, deform'd and ignorant, 
And like a bow buckl'd and bent together 
By some more strong in mischiefs than myself? 
Must I for that be made a common sink 
For all the filth and rubbish of men's tongues 
To fall and run into ? Some call me Witch ; 
And being ignorant of myself, they go 
About to teach me how to be one : urging 
That my bad tongue (by their bad usage made so) 
Forspeaks their cattle, doth bewitch their corn, 
Themselves, their servants, and their babes at nurse. 
This they enforce upon me ; and in part 
Make me to credit it." 

'J. T. Murray, English Dramatic Companies (London, 1910), II, Ap, F. 

* Reprinted in Bullen's edition of Ford's Works, I. The relations of the 
play to its source are discussed by F. Bielefeld in a dissertation called The 
Witch of Edmonton . . . Eine Quelleniintersuchung. Halle, 1904. 



180 

The whole conception of Mother Sawyer, pitiful, abject, ter- 
rible, uttering a speech commensurate with her misery and her 
crimes, is sufficient evidence that Dekker's dramatic powers 
were still developing. Pity and tenderness had always been 
his, but terror, though found in his prison utterances, received 
dramatic expression in this play only.^ 

Dekker here reverts once more to the old Marlowe motive, 
though profoundly humanized by its fresh and original appli- 
cation. The villain is the Devil, who makes an agreement with 
his first victim, the Witch, by a sealing with blood. The same 
agent suggests to Frank Thorney the immediate murder of 
Susan, although the thought had already risen in his own soul : 

" The mind's about it now. One touch from me 
Soon sets the body forward." 

The Devil is likewise associated with Cuddy Banks in the 
comedy scenes, but with no serious outcome, for, says the evil 
spirit, 

" We meet his folly 
But from his virtues must be runaways." 

In this play it is made very clear, as it is not in " If It be not 
Good," that it is only human sin or weakness that gives to the 
powers of evil their opportunity to enter in and take full pos- 
session of the heart. But the characterization is so powerful 
and so true to life that the Devil is not, to the reader, a promi- 
nent personage ; the double tragedy seems to be less the conse- 
quence of direct external influence than the concomitant result 
of hereditary weakness, bad environment, and brutal ignorance 
— the modern equivalent for the devil. 

The horseplay of the comedy scenes, which is not at all like 

° Although there has been general agreement that the conception of the 
part played by the Witch belongs to Dekker, some few voices have of late 
been vaguely raised for Rowley. Aside from stylistic considerations, which 
are greatly in Dekker's favor, his advanced humanitarian sympathies are so 
strongly expressed elsewhere that it would require a great deal of evidence 
to deprive him of the credit due to the treatment of witchcraft in this play. 
This treatment receives proper relief only when compared with such an 
appeal to superstition as The Late Lancashire Witches of Heywood and 
Brome. 



181 

Dekker's unaided work, should probably be assigned to Rowley, 
yet one familiar with the sympathies of the former is inclined 
to see his hand in Cuddy's affection for the black dog, which 
in return uses him " doggedly not devilishly," and in his simple 
inquiry, after he has learned its true nature, whether it were 
not possible for him " to become an honest dog yet." 

The domestic tragedy that constitutes the rest of the play is 
divided between Ford and Dekker. All agree that to the 
former belongs the long opening scene — situation, characters, 
and poetry; and perhaps a part of the second, though honest, 
homely Old Carter with his hearty ways and his racy speech 
should probably be given to Dekker.^ To the older poet too 
Swinburne, who takes no note of Rowley, assigns the greater 
part, or all, of the second, third, and fourth acts, and the open- 
ing scene of the fifth. There seems to be no reasonable doubt^ 
that Susan, the innocent victim in the web of crime, is one of 
Dekker's women. This heroine of the homely name such as 
he preferred to give to his English girls, has a character almost 
as transparent and direct as Dorothea's, and her speech is some- 
times almost as gentle; indeed, in her relations with the un- 
worthy Frank, she is gentleness and humility incarnate, whether 
she explains her tears : 

" You, sweet, have the power 
To make me passionate as an April day: 
Now smile, then weep; now pale, then crimson red. 
You are the powerful moon of my blood's sea. 
To make it ebb or flow into my face. 
As your looks change ;" 

or begs to be allowed to accompany him farther : 

" That I may bring you through one pasture more 
Up to yon knot of trees; amongst those shadows 
I'll vanish from you, they shall teach me how." 

After Frank has mortally wounded her and explained that 
he had never intended to return, she has no reproaches to make : 

' Creizenach : to Dekker or Rowley. 

' Ward's tentative assignment to Ford is so phrased as to be an excellent 
argument for Dekker. 



182 

" Why then I thank you more ; 
You have done lovingly, leaving yourself. 
That you would thus bestow me on another. 
Thou art my husband, Death, and I embrace thee 
With all the love I have ;" 

and a moment later : 

" Now heaven reward you ne'er the worse for me. 
I did not think that death had been so sweet ; 
Nor I so apt to love him. I could ne'er die better. 
Had I stay'd forty years for preparation: 
For I'm in charity with all the world. 
Let me for once be thine example. Heaven ; 
Do to this man as I him free forgive. 
And may he better die and better live." 

" The part of Susan," writes Swinburne, " is one of Dekker's 
most beautiful and delicate studies ; in three short scenes he 
has given an image so .perfect in its simple sweetness as hardly 
to be overmatched outside the gallery of Shakespeare's women. 
The tender freshness of his pathos, its plain frank qualities of 
grace and strength, never showed themselves with purer or 
more powerful effect than here ; the after scene where Frank's 
guilt is discovered has the same force and vivid beauty." 

In this after scene Dekker's presence is felt in the poignant 
homeliness of the events, the kindliness of Katherine, and in a 
sweetness and downright honesty in Winnifred not at all visible 
in the first act. It is Dekker's Winnifred who remains by her 
husband's side after she becomes acquainted with his guilt, 
but bluntly reproaches him for his peculiar meanness towards 
Old Carter : " Your sin's the blacker, so to abuse his good- 
ness." Dekker's hand is likewise seen in the father's awful 
punning when he presents the bloody knife to Frank: "What 
say'st thou to this evidence? is't not sharp? does't not strike 
home? Thou canst not answer honestly, and without a trem- 
bling heart, to this one point, this terrible bloody point " ; and 
in Frank's fear when the spirit of Susan and the living Winni- 
fred come at the same time to his bedside : " How dar'st thou 
come to mock me on both sides of my bed? . . . out- face me, stare 
upon me with strange postures : turn my soul wild by a face in 



183 

which were drawn a thousand ghosts leap'd newly from their 
graves to pluck me into a winding-sheet." 

The second play preserved from the period under considera- 
tion is "The Wonder of a Kingdom." It was registered to 
print May i6, 1631, but was probably not then a new play, for 
the prologue speaks of it as having 

" Won grace 
In the full theatre." 

It was printed in 1636 as "written by Thomas Dekker"; its 
title-page bears the following motto : " Quod non dant proceres, 
dabit histrio." Thirteen years before its publication, there was 
licensed for a company of strangers at the Red Bull a new 
comedy by John Day under the somewhat similar title, " Come 
See a Wonder." Before considering the possible relations be- 
tween these plays, it is necessary to speak at some length of the 
first, which, besides being a puzzle, is a medley. Even the title 
might be of doubtful application if it were not for the hint con- 
veyed in the Latin quotation on the title-page, which, as Fleay 
intimates, seems to clinch his plausible identification of the 
" Wonder " with Dulwich College.^ There are three plots, two 
of which are closely connected. The first tells the romantic 
love story of Fiametta and Angelo, who except at the first 
behave like a pair of puppets and who do not deserve the hap- 
piness they finally attain ; Fiametta's nurse was possibly drawn 
with Juliet's nurse in mind, and Angelo, disguised as a French 
doctor, recalls Andelocia in the same role.® To this story, 
feebly conceived and executed without charm, is joined the 
second plot, a double intrigue in which a sister, in order to 
further a brother's base design, puts herself into a compro- 
mising position. It was undoubtedly written after Fletcher^** 

* The only reason for a different interpretation lies in Tibaldo's words to 
his sister, " I beg it at thy hands that, being a woman, thou'lt make a 
wonder." P., IV, 239. 

° It is in this plot that Fleay finds the allusion to cards, p. 286, that leads 
him to identify what he calls " the original Dekker play " with the anony- 
mous Mack of the Diary, 1595. But there is no reason for separating this 
plot from the Tibaldo plot, which, as shown in the pages following, is 
modeled on Fletcher. 

^"Cp. Schelling, II, 235-236. 



184 

had pointed out the way : the general idea of a heroine's dally- 
ing with evil, yet coming off safe, the types of character repre- 
sented by Alphonsina and the slightly sketched Alisandra, the 
situation brought about by the disguise of Tibaldo as a girl, the 
surprise of the denouement, are all foreign to Dekker's usual 
method. Like Fletcher's also seems to me the dialogue with 
its swiftness, smartness and looseness. 

The third plot has the merest thread of a story and is arti- 
ficially joined to the rest of the play.^^ It contrasts the prodi- 
gality, at once mean and magnificent, of Signior Torrenti with 
the boundless hospitality of Jacomo Gentili, who has built as 
" a gift to charity " a palace with seven gates, twelve vast rooms 
and three hundred and sixty-five windows. However fanciful 
appear some aspects of his philanthropy, he is very explicit in 
his purpose: 

" My heirs shall be poor children fed on alms, 
Soldiers that want limbs, scholars poor and scorned; 
And these will be a sure inheritance, 
Not to decay : Manors and towns will fall. 
Lordships and parks, pastures and woods be sold, 
But this land still continues to the lord ; 
No subtle tricks of law can me beguile of this. 
But of the beggars' dish I shall drink healths 
To last forever ; whilst I live my roof 
Shall cover naked wretches; when I die 
'Tis dedicated to Saint Charity." 

The story of the "noble house-keeper" and that of the 
" riotous lord " are bound together by the adventures of the 
poor sailor brother of the latter, who, cruelly rebuffed by him, 
turns to the hospitality of Gentili. These three characters, 
together with some of the minor ones, are drawn with consid- 
erable power. Gentili is the least distinct, not unnaturally if 
it was the playwright's object to celebrate the founding of 
Dulwich College without being personal.^^ Aside from his 

*^ Fleay, besides pointing out that few of the characters of the Gentili 
plot are named in the dramatis personae, indicates the links that connect it 
with the rest of the play: (i) "We shall your will obey," p. 223, to 
"Meantime we'll hence," p. 224; and (2) "No more of compliment," p. 
280, to "'Tis nobly spoke," p. 281. 

" See below, p. 196, for what seems to me a possible prose portrait of 
Alleyn. 



185 

charity and hospitality, his only notable features are an unwill- 
ingness to marry and a pride in his hale old age, including the 
boast, 

" My kitchen is my doctor, and my garden 
Trusty apothecary." 

Torrenti's prodigality is highly poetical, whether he talks " as 
if he grasped the Indies in each hand," or would give 

" A prince's ransom now to kiss 
Black Cleopatra's cheek." 

His brother, " a brave boy all elemental fire," possesses a swift 
indignant eloquence, and when Gentili would force his friends 
to come to his aid he proudly refuses " to steal compassion 
from them like a thief." 

This interesting little Gentili-Torrenti play is so in conso- 
nance with Dekker's known affection for Alleyn and his recog- 
nized social sympathies, and the poetry, whether imaginative, 
crude, or pedestrian, is so similar to his work elsewhere that 
it is difficult to imagine that a second hand had any share in 
its composition.^^ The chief reason for supposing that this is 
the case is to be found in the fact that after the publication of 
Dekker's play and probably after his death, Day wrote "The 
Parliament of Bees," a rhymed masque-like play, in which large 
portions of the Gentili-Torrenti story are incorporated with 
few changes except those necessary to secure rhyme.^* He 
likewise used in his " Bees " certain portions of " The Noble 
Spanish Soldier," a play registered as Dekker's, published as 

^' It is hardly necessary to add that the one-legged soldier is very similar 
to the maimed soldier in // It be not Good and to the British slave in The 
Virgin Martyr, and that hale old men abound in Dekker's plays. Bullen 
calls attention to the likeness between Gentili's programme for each day of 
the week and that of the King in // It be not Good. See Introd., Works of 
John Day, 26 ; see also his note prefixed to The Parliament of Bees. 

"Character 2, the Hospital Bee, is Gentili; char. 3, the Plush Bee, is 
Torrenti ; char. 7, the Gathering Bee, is Lord Vanni ; char. 9, the Quack- 
salving Bee, is the apothecary; char. 10, the Usuring Bee, is the broker 
(Henslowe, remarks Fleay). Char. 4 and 5, the Field Bee and the Poetical 
Bee, are taken from " The Noble Spanish Soldier." 

This note gives no idea of the ingenuity of Day's transference ; it merely 
identifies the chief characters. 



186 

Samuel Rowley's (S. R.), and exhibiting the handiwork of 
both. Fleay adopts the easy solution of assigning to Day all 
that he appropriated, but in view of the internal evidence it is 
more reasonable to suppose that Dekker was an unnamed col- 
laborator upon " Come See a Wonder," for which he wrote 
the Gentili-Torrenti sub-plot, and that later he reclaimed it for 
a play entirely his own. There remains always the possibility 
that Day helped plan this little social play or that some of his 
lines have been retained. To the question of honesty that thus 
arises, Bullen would seem to give the most satisfactory reply 
when he says: "As Dekker and Day were on more than one 
occasion collaborateurs, it is open to a generous critic to assume 
that one of the two writers put his work at the disposal of the 
other " ;^^ that is, to re-phrase the quotation from my point of 
view, that in those days of loose collaboration and loose owner- 
ship of plays, Day, in writing the " Bees," selected whatever 
material suited his purpose, whether written by Dekker or him- 
self, from a play to which in its original form both had con- 
tributed; and that he did it without any sense of dishonesty. 
This view is strengthened by the fact that the most charming 
part of " The Parliament of Bees " was written for the occa- 
sion and could not be mistaken for the work of any one ex- 
cept Day. 

But before we leave " The Wonder of a Kingdom," a speci- 
men must be given of Torrenti's raptures, that, as Bullen truly 
says, " remind us more of the frolic exuberance of Old Fortu- 
natus than of Day's dainty courtliness." 

" I'll pave my great hall with a floor of clouds, 
Wherein shall move an artificial sun, 
Reflecting round about me golden beams 
Whose flames shall make the room seem all on fire ; 
And when 'tis night, just as that sun goes down, 
A silver moon shall rise, drawn up by stars. 
And as that moves, I standing in her orb. 
Will move with her, and be that man i' th' moon 
So mock't in old wives' tales ; then overhead 
A roof of woods and forests full of deer. 
Trees growing downwards, full of singing choirs. 
And this I'll do that men with praise may crown 
My fame for turning the world upside down." 

^° Note prefixed to The Parliament of Bees. 



187 

A word must be added about Dekker's share in " The Noble 
Soldier," already referredtounder its running title "The Noble 
Spanish Soldier."" It was registered to print in 1631 as by 
"Thomas Decker," and again in 1633; but when it was finally 
published in 1634, the title-page bore the initials S. R., com- 
monly interpreted as Samuel Rowley. A printer's note tells 
us that the author was then dead. Bullen's suggestion that the 
play had undergone some revision at Dekker's hands seems to 
me reasonable.^'' The language of the King and more fre- 
quently of Baltazar, the honest soldier, recalls Dekker's violence 
of phrasing in connection with similar characters, and some of 
Cornego's puns have a weakly Dekkeresque flavor. The style, 
in so far as it is Dekker's, reminds one of " Match Me in 
London " more than of any other single play.^^ Such a working 
over of speeches and dialogue adds nothing to Dekker's fame ; 
for he seems to have been unable to put any heart into the 
work. The use of his name when the play was registered may 
have been unwarranted, or an explanation may be found in the 
desire of author or publisher to secure a larger sale. 

Except for the probably slight work on this play, Dekker's 
last recorded drama is the lost " Bristow Merchant." It was 
written together with Ford, and the supposition that it was 

** Fleay identifies this play with The Spanish Fig written for Henslowe 
in 1602, but he has the only significant fact wrong: the king is not poisoned 
with a Spanish fig but with wine prepared for some one else ; however, in 
the poisoning scene " Spanish figs " are mentioned as a usual agent for 
producing death. 

^'' Introd. to his edition of the play, in Old Eng. Plays, I. (1882.) 
^* The enumeration of nations, p. 302, is similar, as Bullen points out, to 
that in Match Me, P., IV, 180, and it occurs in a scene assigned to Dekker 
by Fleay. Both plays use figures drawn from the animal kingdom in a 
somewhat similar way ; compare, for example, the following passages : 

" I do not love to pluck the quills 
With which I make pens, out of a Lion's claw." 

Noble Spanish Soldier, p. 293. 

" I do not like 
To see a Bull to a wild fig tree tied 
To make him tame." 

Match Me, P., IV, 202. 



188 

the revamping of an old play is impertinent. It has lately 
been suggested^® that there may have been some connection 
between this play and a short novel written by Dekker at some 
date previous to December 17, 1630, when it was registered to 
print under the title " Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish." It was 
published the following year anonymously. Its sub-title is as 
follows, "A Bristow Diamond set in two Rings, and both 
Crack'd. Profitable for Married Men, pleasant for young men, 
and a rare example for all good Women." It tells the rather 
dreary story of a " Bristow " merchant, who after an extended 
career of profligacy and an attempt at murder, is finally ran- 
somed and lovingly received by the wife he has twice betrayed 
— " a rare example for all good Women." He repents, and 
reduced to poverty, they live in a small shop until the wife's 
penny, which was all the venture she would entrust to her 
husband in his pound-foolish days, and which he had given 
to a subordinate, returns with an increment of many pounds 
and is the means of restoring prosperity to them. We are told 
that the story is true but that the names of the characters 
have been changed.^*^ 

The address to the reader is cheerful, moralizing, and not 
without humor. I quote a few lines : 

" The discourse is hid, like our ladies' heads in taffeta pursenets, under 
the masques of Ferdinand and Annabell. Their lives and their loves are 
enclosed in this nutshell, which, if you crack without hurting your teeth, 
the kernel is sweet in the chewing. The apples plucked from this little 
tree may serve to turn in the fire in your Christmas nights, and not much 
amiss all the winter after. So fall to, and farewell." 

Following this address is a brief discourse on " The Excellent 
Worth of a Penny," from which I make two characteristic 
extracts : 

" A Penny is a very faithfull messenger, and the best errand it goes upon 
is when a rich man sends his commendations by it to a beggar. The rich 
man gives and the poor man takes ; no, the poor man gives and the rich 

" By Professor W. Bang in his preface to the edition of " Penny- Wise, 
Pound-Foolish," printed in Materialien zur Kunde des dlteren Englischen 
Dramas, 1908. 

'^"Materialien, etc., 185. 



189 

man takes, for the prayers of the poor increase the blessings of the rich. 
... A Penny had wont to pay for a Pot of nappy Ale : but now a Pot of 
Ale defies the company of a Penny." 

In 1625 London was swept by the great plague which carried 
away among its victims the dramatist Fletcher. Doubtless thus 
deprived of the incentive to write plays, and feeling anew the 
terrible interest of the subject, Dekker once more took up the 
work of the contemporary historian and gave the world a 
detailed account of the plague at its worst in his " A Rod for 
Runaways. In which flight of theirs, if they look back, they 
may behold many fearful Judgments of God, sundry ways 
pronounced upon this City and on several persons both flying 
from it and staying in it. Expressed in many dreadful Ex- 
amples of sudden Death, fallen upon both young and old, 
within this City and the Suburbs, in the Fields and open 
Streets, to the terror of all those who live and to the warning 
of those who are to die, to be ready when God Almighty shall 
be pleased to call them. With additions of some new Acci- 
dents. Written by Tho. D."^^ The brief epistle, appropriately 
addressed to a surgeon and adorned with several puns and the 
writer's favorite figure, shows no such signs of personal pain 
or money difficulties as are discernible in the works written 
just before and after his long imprisonment. 

The tone of the general preface is impersonal and somewhat 
tragic, but not without verbal tricks. " It is a picture," writes 
Dekker, " not drawn to the life, but to the death ... of above 
23,000 in less than twelve weeks." " Be sure you have hung 
strong padlocks upon your doors," he advises the absentees, 
" for in many streets, there are none to guard your goods but 
the houses themselves. If one shop be open, sixteen in a row 
stand shut up together, and those that are open were as good 
to be shut, for they take no money." " Few woollen drapers 
sell any cloth," he goes on grimly, "but every churchyard is 
every day full of linen drapers: and the earth is the great 
warehouse, which is piled up with winding-sheets. To see a 

^ G., IV, 267-310. It is clear that this edition is not the first, an infer- 
ence borne out by the text, p. 284, which shows a careless manipulation of 
dates. 



190 

rapier or feather worn in London now is as strange as to meet 
a Low-country soldier with money in his purse. The walks in 
Paul's are empty: the walks in London too wide, (here's no 
jostling), but the best is, Cheapside is a comfortable garden 
where all physic herbs grow. We wish that you, the runaways, 
would suffer the market-folks to come to us (or that they had 
hearts to come), for the Statute of Forestalling is sued upon 
you. We have lost your companies, and not content with that, 
you rob us of our victuals : but when you come back, keep open 
house (to let in air) and set good cheer on your tables, that we 
may bid you welcome." 

The point of view is that of the moralist : " God must have 
fair play," he urges ; and again, " The Gospel and God's heralds, 
preachers, have a long time cried out against our iniquities, 
but we are deaf, sleepy and sluggish ; and now there is a thun- 
der speaks from Heaven to wake us." Mixed with the admoni- 
tions is the old passionate love and pity for London, mother 
of his life, nurse of his being. As in the first plague book, 
written over twenty years before, stories, mostly tragic, make 
up a large part of the pamphlet. As we might expect, there 
is a " happy " story or two, but for them he apologizes : 
" Neither do I this out of an idle or undecent merriment, for 
jests are no fruit for this season"; and after a tale relating 
how a company cheated their hostess out of her pay by show- 
ing what seemed to be tokens of the plague, he adds, " It is not 
safe to kiss lightning, mock at thunder, or dally with divine 
judgments." There is no space to speak of the other stories 
unless perhaps that of the plague-stricken mother; while she 
called for aid, her child, likewise stricken, " leaning to her 
cheek, immediately departed," and, as the incident ends " so her 
child and she went lovingly together to one grave." Although 
this second plague-book, written by one who had lived through 
many a year of such horrors, is less luxuriant, poetical, dash- 
ing, than its predecessor, there is perhaps a gain in simplicity; 
the tone of the whole is more evenly and earnestly religious, 
and it closes with a prayer of mellow charity for all, even the 
"runaways" against whose selfishness the pamphlet was 
avowedly written. 



191 

Except for a fourth edition of " Canaan's Calamity " in 1625, 
there is no record of any other work until 1627, when Dekker 
wrote the lost pageant for Hugh Hammersley's mayoralty. 
We know this, for he says so in a small volume called " Wars, 
Wars, Wars," printed in 1628, but now apparently lost; it was 
dedicated to Hammersley and the two sheriffs of London and 
Middlesex for the year, and its body consists of a praise of 
war and of the aldermen then in office and closes with " some 
vigorous and, doubtless, acceptable applause of the twenty 
City Lieutenants." If we are to judge from Collier's remarks, 
the " tract " is a poem ; it contains the lines about his old age 
quoted in the second chapter of this study.^- 

For 1628 and for 1629 Dekker also wrote the mayoralty 
pageant. The first, entitled " Britannia's Honor : Brightly 
Shining in several Magnificent Shews or Pageants, to Celebrate 
the Solemnity of the Right Honorable Richard Deane," was 
presented October 29, " at the particular Cost and Charges of 
the Right Worshipful, Worthy, and Ancient Society of Skin- 
ners." It was printed the same year and presumably brought 
the maker the " golden gains " he mentions in his dedication. 
Of the uninspired verse of the speeches, unbroken by a single 
lyric, the following are among the best lines : 

" There the poor Bee, the sweating tradesman, flies 
From flower to flower, and home with honey hies," 

one of the many passages that show that Dekker as well as 
Day had a fondness for bees used allegorically. But to the 
lover of Dekker the interest lies in the outburst of love for 
London expressed in the opening pages, and in the modest and 
kindly little note at the end, equally characteristic, commend- 
ing the architecture of the pageant, unmatched for years and 
executed by " Mr. Gerard Christmas, the father, and Mr. John 
Christmas, the son." 

In " Britannia's Honor," the glory of furs had necessarily 
been a part of Dekker's theme. He would seem to have found 
iron a more interesting subject, for the following year he wrote 

^ For a reprint of Collier's article, which contains all that is known about 
Wars, see G., V, Ap. i. 



192 

a much better pageant for the Society of Ironmongers. Pos- 
sibly the personaHty of the Mayor had something to do with 
the matter, for his dedication to James Campbell, the new 
mayor, contains a warm little recognition of the circumstance 
that his father had worn the robe of scarlet before him. 
Neither date nor publisher's name appears on the title-page, 
but if Dekker followed his usual custom, he had the pageant 
printed soon after it was produced. Both the title, " London's 
Tempe," and the sub-title, " The Field of Happiness," refer to 
Campbell's name; and the fifth pageant is an arbor furnished 
with trees, flowers, and fruits, " reflecting upon the name of 
Campe-bell or Le Beu Champe, a fair and glorious field." The 
praise of iron is vigorous and ingenious, and skillfully inserted 
in the little dramatic scene between Vulcan and Jove. In the 
same show is found the most durable thing in the play, a song 
sung by the Cyclops " in praise of iron, the anvil and hammer " 
— a little lyric^^ that gives one a new idea of Dekker's versa- 
tility and the conviction that his singing days were not yet past. 
In 1630 the "2 Honest Whore" appeared in print for the 
first time, and the same year saw a third edition of " The 
Bachelor's Banquet." To this year belongs, also, "Penny- 
Wise, Pound-Foolish." Although "Match Me in London" 
was registered to print in 1630, November 8, it was not pub- 
lished until the following year. Its epistle-dedicatory is ad- 
dressed "To the Noble Lover (and deservedly beloved) of the 
Muses, Lodowick Carlell " ; and it reads as follows : 

" That I am thus bold to sing a dramatic note in your ear is no wonder, 
in regard you are a chorister in the choir of the Muses. Nor is it any 
over-daring in me to put a play-book into your hands, being a courtier; 
Roman poets did so to their emperors ; the Spanish, now, to their grandees ; 
the Italians, to their illustrissimoes ; and our own nation, to the great 
ones. 

" I have been a priest in Apollo's temple many years ; my voice is decay- 
ing with my age, yet yours, being clear and above mine, shall much honour 
me if you but listen to my old tunes. Are they set ill ? Pardon them ; 
well? then receive them. 

" Glad will you make me if by your means the King of Spain speaks 
our language in the Court of England ; yet have you wrought as great a 

** Included by Schelling in his Seventeenth Century Lyrics. 



193 

wonder ; for the nine sacred Sisters, by you, are there become courtiers 
and talk with sweet tongues, instructed by your Delian eloquence. You 
have a King to your master, a Queen to your mistress, and the Muses your 
play-fellow. I to them a servant," etc. 

Since this preface is one of the last personal utterances of 
the poet, now nearly sixty years old, it is pleasant to observe 
how serene it is, how free from anything that could connote 
disappointment or pain; full of graceful appreciation for the 
work of another, but quietly confident of his own past service 
to poetry. 

From 1632 has come down to us a merry little lyric com- 
mending the " Northern Lass,"-* a play written by Richard 
Brome, servant and ** son " of Jonson, who evidently saw no 
impropriety in claiming his master's former adversary as a 
second literary father. I quote all but the last two lines. 

" To MY Son Brome and his Lass. 

Which, then, of both shall I commend? 
Or thee, that art my son and friend ; 
Or her, by thee begot? A girl 
Twice worth the Cleopatrian pearl. 
No : 'tis not fit for me to grace 
Thee who art mine, and to thy face. 
Yet I could say, the merriest maid 
Among the Nine for thee has laid 
A garland by; and jeers to see 
Pied idiots tear the Daphnean tree. 
Putting their eyes out with those boughs 
With which she bids me deck thy brows. 
But what I bring shall crown thy daughter. 
My grandchild, who, though full of laughter, 
Is chaste and witty to the time, 
Not lumpish cold, as is her clime. 
By Phoebus' lyre, thy Northern lass 
Our Southern proudest beauties pass." 

These lines were written by one who had not lost the zest 
for living and who was not ground down by unusual poverty 
or suffering. The same state of mind is to be seen in some 
additions to his most popular prose pamphlet, probably written 

" Entered S. R., March 24. 

14 



194 

at about the same time, for in 1632 was once more published 
in altered form and under a new title, the " Villanies Discov- 
ered" of 1616 and 1620. As I have not seen this very rare 
edition or even its full title-^ I must fall back upon the edition 
of 1638, which I agree with Fleay is a reprint of that of 
1632.2® The dedications of 1638, as noted earlier in the study, 
could not have been written as late as 1638, for in the first 
Dekker speaks of his " threescore years," and in the second 
more vaguely of its being " now about twenty years past, since 
a bed of strange snakes were found ..." and of Candle- 
light's being " the first that discovered that cursed nursery of 
vipers."" The full title, then, in 1638 runs as follows: "Eng- 
lish Villanies seven several times Prest to Death by the Printers ; 
but (still reviving again) are now the eighth time, (as at the 
first) discovered by Lanthorn and Candlelight; and the help of 
a new Cryer called O-per-se-O : whose loud voice proclaims to 
all that will hear him, another Conspiracy of Abuses lately 
plotting together to hurt the Peace of this Kingdom; which 
the Bellman (because he then went stumbling i' th' dark) could 
never see till now. And because a company of Rogues, cun- 
ning, canting Gypsies, and all the Scum of our Nation fight 
here under their Tattered Colors, at the end is a Canting Dic- 

^ Lowndes is contented with " English Villanies six several times prest 
to death, but still reviving again, and now the seventh, etc." He speaks of 
an imperfect copy sold for i8 shillings. 

^ The only reason for thinking that it is not a reprint lies in the fact 
that the table of contents and the body of the tract do not correspond : 
there are three additional chapters on prison life, not named in the table 
of contents ; and one chapter there named — " The Infection of the 
Suburbs " — is omitted. The table of contents does not correspond with that 
of the edition of 1620 either, for, besides omitting the six chapters on 
prison life earlier discussed, it has two new chapters : " The Abuses of 
Keepers, Nurses, or Char-women," and " The Abuses of Alehouses," re- 
tained in the body of the 1638 edition. Fleay's assumption that the edition 
of 1637 (i. e., 1638, the last page bears the inscription: Febru. 27, 1637, 
Recudatur, Matth. Qay) is " spurious " rests apparently upon some such 
discrepancies as I have indicated, increased perhaps by his desire to assign 
to Dekker some anonymous plays in the Diary, a desire which has an 
obvious connection with the date of the poet's birth. 

^' It was actually twenty-four years since Candlelight had discovered that 
" nursery." 



195 

tionary, to teach their Language : with Canting Songs. A 
Book to make Gentlemen Merry, Citizens wary, Countrymen 
careful. Fit for all Justices to read over because it is a Pilot 
by whom they may make strange Discoveries. 1638." 

The epistle-dedicatory addressed to the Justices for the Peace 
of the county of Middlesex exhibits the usual regard for law 
and for justice tempered with mercy, and inserts, in a char- 
acter of the true magistrate, a little hint to the effect that 
all magistrates are not possessed of the same notions of 
equity. The epistle to the reader is not important except for 
the aid it affords in establishing the date. The additions to 
the pamphlet are dovetailed into the original plan-^ and take 
a generally narrative form. After a vivacious and vivid ac- 
count of meal-time and locking-up time in prison, which closes 
with the story of the infernal messenger's stealing a *' Dis- 
covery " written by a prisoner,^^ the Bellman is made to pur- 
sue the journey into another prison, where he heard " the 
sound of tunes more tragical, more serious: here was another 
manner of noise, new terrors, new shrieks, new condolements. 
No, no, they were not new, the air is filled with them every 
day ; they are not strange because they are common." In the 
midst of his account of the " ululations " and " deplorations," 
Dekker pauses to name the five debtors' prisons on the south 
side of the Thames and the nine on the north side; he then 
continues, falling into the pointed style of the earler prison 
section : 

" A prisoner is a bird in a cage ; when he sings, he mourns : a bear at 
a stake baited for money: a horse in a pound; be his courage never so 
great, there 'tis lost : a Daniel in the lion's den, but where his Abacuc ? 

'*The visit of the Devil's mesenger to prisoners, at the end of ch. ii, 
may have been added to the 1616 edition, for I have not seen the corre- 
sponding chapter. 

The opening sentence of ch. 12, which immediately follows is: "Albeit 
I have done with prison-keepers, I must not take such an abrupt leave of 
prisoners." This sentence must have immediately followed the last chapter 
of the 1616 prison section, which closes with a discussion of keepers. It is 
without meaning in its present position, where it must have been retained 
carelessly. 

^' End of ch. 11. Unpaged. 



196 

... If a gentleman keeps a wretch in prison, he deserves to be degraded, 
for gentry is bound to honor, to defend the oppressed. If a citizen bars a 
man of his liberty, he himself is not free but hazards the danger of being 
a foreigner in Heaven, for disfranchizing his brother on earth."'" 

The next chapter^^ gives a picture of the pohtic bankrupt, 
"not the honest bankrupt undone by suretyship, casuahies or 
losses at sea ; but a poHtic bankrupt, a noble-in-the-pound 
bankrupt, a five-shilhngs bankrupt, nay, a ten-groats-in-the- 
pound bankrupt, a voluntary villain, a devouring locust, a de- 
stroying caterpillar, a golden thief." The law-loving and law- 
conversant poet cites the laws of recent monarchs against these 
" anthropophagi," who even in prison are " brave in clothes, 
spruce in ruffs, with gold-wrought nightcaps on their heads." 

In the last chapter^^ of these additions, the Bellman per- 
suades " the better sort of prisoners who had the true feeling 
of sorrow indeed " to draw up a supplication to Conscience ; 
and the narrative continues : 

" At length she was entertained and welcomed into a worthy citizen's 
house : a gentleman that by her assistance had risen to great wealth, by her 
argument grew strong in religion ; by her persuasions embraced scholars, 
loved soldiers, made much of all men. 

" His soul was a garden beautifully planted ; his mind a palace rarely 
adorned ; his body a temple of such admirable building that people passing 
by would do it reverence.^^ 

" In this grave citizen's company was sweet society of other noble spirits, 
sitting at a table, all of them taking honor from the city to be called her 
sons and she as much glorying by them to be saluted by the name of 
mother. 

" At the very first sight of Conscience, they all rose up, receiving her 
with all the graceful compliments that were due to so divine and excel- 
lent a creature : every one of them hasting with a kind of grave ceremony 
to take her by the hand and seat her highest at the board. 

" Then all being silent and their eyes fixed only upon her face with an 
expectation of some speech from her, she drew out of her bosom the 
prisoners' supplication, read it openly, and repeating the particular num- 
bers of all such miserable men as lay in prison, she fetched a deep sigh, 

^° Ch. 12. The Abuses done to Prisoners by Over-cruel Creditors. 
'^ Ch. 13. The Villanies and Abuses Committed by Politic Bankrupts. 
** Ch. 14. The Prisoners' Supplication. 

^ Margin : The picture of a noble citizen. Edward Alleyn ? Alleyn had 
died in 1625. 



197 

and then brake into this passionate abruption : ' O,' quoth Conscience, ' if 
amongst you (but I hope you are none of them) there be any under whom 
men suffer the cruelty of English execution (worse than the German wheel), 
imprisonment : let Conscience yet persuade you to send Mercy to speak to 
them at their iron grates. . . . The omnipotent builder of the heavens 
oftentimes squares out his platforms by your lines and your measures : for 
if man commiserates man, the Master and chief Almoner of mercy extends 
compassion to him ; if not, not. It is one of the main petitions which you 
tie your souls to every morning : dally not with the great Treasurer of 
heaven and earth, to ask one thing and mean another :" so your own turns 
be served, you care for nobody else : not to forgive when you are forgiven 
is to tell a lie to Him that is all truth ; you make a promise and break it, 
you beg a blessing and take up a curse : such equivocation runs hand in 
hand with condemnation. 

" ' Be men, be Christians, be citizens. Citizens possess generosity, affability, 
meekness, love, piety, pity ; this is the blazon of a noble coat : make it the 
escutcheon of your arms : mercy is the best motto, clemency a crest ; no 
herald can give a braver. Release men made captives to you by the laws 
of this kingdom, and the laws which are set down in the Upper House of 
the Celestial Parliament will make you free denizens in a more glorious 
kingdom. A kingdom where there is no change of kings, no alteration of 
state, no loss of peers, no wars, no revenges, no citizens flying for fear 
of infection, none dying of them that stay, no prisoners to write petitions 
to Conscience, yet Conscience sits there in glory: there is true majesty, 
true honor, true peace, true health : there is all life, all happiness, all 
immortality.' 

" She ended ; they arose, and one of the company, who was a well-wilier to 
prisoners, hastened home to write down what he heard Conscience utter." 

Here the story of Dekker's life must close. Nothing is 
known about him after 1632. The following year his some- 
time collaborator William Rowley borrowed the prologue writ- 
ten for "The Wonder of a Kingdom" to use with his own 
play, "All's Lost by Lust," but this incident fails to lighten 
in any spot the shadow that falls, gently enough, on the poet's 
last months or years. 

** Marginal note : " Forgive and be forgiven." 



CHAPTER X 
Conclusion 

Born in London, almost certainly in 1572, of unknown 
parentage, Thomas Dekker lived into the fourth decade of the 
seventeenth century. He was solely a man of letters. His 
preparation for his calling lay in a grammar-school education 
or its equivalent, wide reading, probably a brief campaign in 
the Netherlands, association with " scholars " and writers, 
one of whom was Nash, and in attendance at the theatres, 
where he was most delighted by Lyly and most deeply moved 
by Marlowe. This education was supplemented by the uni- 
versity of life in a great city and by an unusually intimate 
acquaintance with the charms of the country. At a date 
unknown, perhaps about 1596, he began to write for Henslowe, 
and the connection, which covered a period of prodigious pro- 
ductiveness, lasted to the end of 1602, possibly a few years 
longer. It was interrupted by Jonson's spectacular attack upon 
Marston and the rest, an attack that Dekker answered reluc- 
tantly and to the destruction of an unfinished tragedy of great 
promise. These years brought him success and fame, many 
and warm friendships, and the tolerable sort of poverty en- 
joyed by most men in his position. About 1606 he broke with 
the stage and turned to pamphlet-writing, but in spite of the 
popularity of some of his books and a half-hearted appeal to 
the patronage he had at first disdained, he seems to have served 
a more capricious and less appreciative mistress. His return to 
the drama was marked by three plays tragic in spirit and ex- 
pression. -^But neither prose nor plays paid his debts, for in 
1613 he entered King's Bench prison. That " terror " of almost 
seven years seems to have maimed his creative powers for the 
time, but immediately upon his release we find him once more 
writing plays, chiefly in collaboration with Day and Ford ; one 
of these plays unites a deepened sense of tragedy with all his 
early sweetness of temper. The plague of 1625 may have 

198 



199 

ended his work for the theatres. Our few glimpses of his last 
years show him busy and serene : he wrote two new prose 
pieces, edited several plays that had not yet been published, and 
for three years held the honored and well paid office of city 
poet. His last known poetical utterance was gay and enthu- 
siastic ; and his last known prose simple and elevated. He had 
a special affection for Nash, Marston, Webster and Alleyn, 
and he collaborated with every important dramatist of his day 
except Shakespere, Chapman, Beaumont, and Fletcher; with 
Massinger he did not collaborate, but one of his tragedies was 
subjected to the younger playwright's blameless and uninspired 
pen. Although he was reserved in his personal utterances and 
singularly modest, he did not when he was old feel that his 
life had been a failure. He had spent the greater part of it in 
doing what he most enjoyed. He had had, as he well realized, 
the pageantry and the spectacle of life and the visions of the 
idealist without money and without price ; and his humor and 
his religious faith had shielded him from the evil effects of 
poverty and imprisonment that might have been experienced 
by a nature less richly endowed. There is many a sadder 
story in the history of the Elizabethan stage. 

Besides the warmheartedness, the sincerity, the piety and^ 
the patriotism with which Dekker is usually with justice 
credited, he possessed a manly and independent spirit that 
despised servility and resented injustice, a democratic breadth 
of sympathy more in accordance with the twentieth than 
the sixteenth century, a keen and wise interest in matters 
of good citizenship, and that other modern virtue of a generally 
optimistic outlook upon life. He loved all sorts of beauty; 
most of all, the beauty of music, poetry, and religion, and dis- 
illusion never came to brush off its bloom. We know less about 
the habits of the man : he probably did not escape the personal 
grossness that seems to have prevailed equally among bohe- 
mians, citizens, and gentlemen. 

Born with the temperament of the idealist and the seeing 
eye of the realist, endowed with a two-fold gift for poetry and 
prose, and possessed of unusual wit and humor, Dekker was 
bound in the nature of the case to scatter his powers. The 



200 

necessity of rapid production very likely conduced towards the 
same end, although this seems to me less certain, for ease has 
seldom been a nurse to literature, and Dekker, like most of his 
fellow playwrights, wrote primarily to make a living. 

Of his non-dramatic work only a few words need to be 
spoken. A duly weighed appreciation of his lyrics must wait 
for a collection that shall include all the floating songs; but 
it may now be said of the best that they have upon them 
the freshness and spontaneity of the early days, and of the 
one that Palgrave has made familiar, that it ranks with Shake- 
spere's, but it could not have been written by Shakespere, for 
it is a song of the people. 

Dekker's prose is once more coming into its own. Although 
the books most popular during his lifetime have the least en- 
during value, yet all possess interest, for they afford us lumi- 
nous glimpses into the past and they reflect the personality of 
the author, upon whom city scenes exercised so potent a 
fascination, and who loved, pitied, and laughed with and at 
the people who thronged them. Always clear and idiomatic, 
he commanded a variety of styles, often swift, gay, exuberant, 
nearly always picturesque, but at will whimsical, dramatic, 
ironical, or epigrammatic,- and rising at his very best to a noble 
simplicity that may have had its origin in his susceptibility, 
moral and aesthetic, to the rhythm of the English Bible. He 
also possessed an admirable gift as raconteur. Modern prose 
had not to wait for Dryden. 

Any attempt to estimate Dekker's dramatic achievement is 
at the outset almost paralyzed by the fact that about half the 
plays he wrote alone and the great majority of those he wrote 
with others have been lost. We must further remind our- 
selves that, yielding to a temptation presented to few, he gave 
up some four years to prose alone and that nearly seven of 
what should have been his best years were spent in prison. 
During a career that, thus interrupted, lasted from about 1594 
to the end of 1624, he tried his hand, alone or with others, at 
almost every variety of play except the tragedy of blood, 
though examples of some species have perished. He was most 
successful when he set up a new type, as in " The Shoemaker's 



20"J 

Holiday," or greatly modified an old type, as in " Old Fortu- 
natus" or "The Virgin Martyr," or a prevailing type as in 
"The Honest Whore." He retained a taste for allegory and 
a vital interest in the strife between good and evil, but he 
showed little subtlety in depicting the inner struggle against 
temptation. Since the romantic is seldom absent from his 
plays and since his most beautiful poetry was composed for 
romantic scenes, we may assume that his permanent sym- 
pathies lay in that field; but with a sort of fore-feeling for 
the direction literature was to take in the distant future, he 
realized the artistic possibilities in the unsophisticated life of 
the humble, and he represented it upon the stage with more 
fidelity to fact, humor, grace, and sympathy than any other 
Elizabethan. While his conceptions were often large in their 
scope, they were usually simple and treated with simplicity; 
and though he used spectacle freely, and surprise not infre- 
quently, he depended for efifect rather upon faithfulness to life 
than upon involved or startling stories. He therefore seldom 
uses Italian motives; even the pastoral did not attract him. 
He avoided the violent, the unnatural, the disgusting, the un- 
wholesome; his only intrigue plays were collaborated with 
others and exhibit none of his gifts except goodnatured satire. 
He shows a marked preference for the gentler virtues : to his 
lovers, love is a sacrament — there is no passion except in con- 
nection with lust, and his plays offer us no villains worth men- 
tioning; his most heroic figures are gentle in their heroism 
rather than sublime, and he was but obeying an instinct of his 
genius when he gave to Dorothea a child angel as attendant 
and protector and when he made Bellafront climb a slow and 
painful path to salvation. Whether conditioned by the bent 
of his own mind or by the composition of the companies he 
was writing for, he was fond of depicting elderly or old men, — 
Old Fortunatus dominated by hunger and thirst after experi- 
ence, mad Simon Eyre by a different sort of Elizabethan rap- 
ture, Gentili by the passion of hospitality. But after all, 
Dekker's characters do not readily classify themselves: not 
all his women are gentle nor all his lovers mad. 

Dekker must early have learned to depend upon his humor 



^2 

for a part of his success. At its best it finds expression in the 
creation of character, and there he showed a modern tendency 
to temper the humorous with the serious, the pathetic or the 
strongly likable: it is so with Orlando, with Eyre, his wife, 
and his band of shoemakers; even with the "high-flying" 
Matheo, and it is so with his servant-fools. He also drew 
well simple, rather naive persons — not clowns, but a knight 
and his wife or an eligible widow. He had no aptitude for the 
comedy of humors. His use of dialect — Dutch-English and 
Welsh-English — is the most convincing on the Elizabethan 
stage and it is so used as to seem to reveal racial character- 
istics in the speakers. He kept his early fondness for puns 
and Lylyisms, and his love of the unexpected often makes his 
humor flash with wit. What has been called the Hogarthian 
quality in some of his comedy scenes is perhaps not based 
wholly upon desire to please the vulgar, for elsewhere a note 
of grimness or of irony is heard in the speech of that keen 
observer of life. Against him, however, must be reckoned a 
limited volcabulary of innuendo and " scrurrility " of the sort 
not wholly unemployed by the greatest. Though more than 
annoying, for it gets into one's way, it does not affect an im- 
portant character or enter into a situation, and no one can 
remember it. 

Dekker's greater faults as a dramatist are well known : the 
two most serious are a considerable unevenness of execution, 
although this is not found in all the plays; and a more con- 
siderable weakness of structure, though even here one play 
usually described as incoherent would assume form with 
proper editing. His own words and the evidence of care- 
ful workmanship in other matters forbid us to assume that 
he had no fitting sense of the dignity of his art. Perhaps the 
explanation may be sought for in the circumstances of his 
life and in his temperament : his long collaboration with men of 
inferior talent during his formative period must have worked 
him injury, perhaps even his precocity if he actually began 
writing at twenty-two; his humor, poetry and naturalness-, 
probably obscured to himself and to others his generally poor 
technique ; the long interruptions suffered by his dramatic work 



203 

were also against him. But possibly a genius that was essen- 
tially lyrical and bound to attain its most nearly perfect 
expression in a scene, a mood, sometimes a mood lasting 
through a whole play, was more capable of producing unity 
of sentiment or of character than any other unity. As there 
seems to me some evidence that he did not produce rapidly 
his greatest work — with the possible exception of his songs — I 
am inclined to ascribe to temperament that other fault of a 
descent to slovenly verse so astounding to the reader; for no 
amount of industry quite answers the stubborn demand for 
the time and the place and the right mood " all together." 

It is often said that Dekker showed no evolution, no de- 
velopment. In the absence of so much of the evidence, late 
plays as well as early, this is a difficult problem to face. Yet I 
venture to think that dramatically and psychologically " The 
Honest Whore " is an advance upon " Old Fortunatus " and 
" The Shoemaker's Holiday " ; that the finest scenes in " The 
Virgin Martyr" show a more exquisite perception of the 
power of language to reveal character than any previous play; 
and that in tragic power " The Witch of Edmonton " sur- 
passes all earlier work. 

Dekker's positive contributions to the drama have been 
partly indicated: power of varied humor, power of pathos and 
the most delicate sentiment, not even shadowed by senti- 
mentality ; power to make the everyday aspects of life seem 
as attractive as they really are ; power to create character, — a 
power based on sound psychology, for he was, to employ one 
of his own phrases, "deep read in the volume of a man"; 
hence we have no violation of human nature, no treacherous 
friend is made hero or heroine, no nice girl is compelled to 
marry a newly converted ruffian, no woman falls, repents, and 
promptly dies without any special reason, as in Heywood's 
most famous tragedy, and there are few unmotivated con- 
versions. At Dekker's very best he was able to create, also, 
brief scenes of surpassing beauty, as when he suggests with 
poignant and haunting phrase a thing so elusive as the charm 
of a girl's being when she awakes from sleep, or with un- 
matched purity makes poetry, in diction and melody, a trans- 



y 



204 

lucent garment for young angelhood and young sainthood. 
And he had command, not only of fresh, racy, natural prose 
dialogue, but also of beautiful poetical dialogue, whether to 
set forth the ardors of hopeless love or the frail and dying 
beauty of spring. 

Many and varied gifts go to the making of a great dramatist, 
and from the fame of every one of Shakespere's contempo- 
raries large deductions have had to be made: from Dekker's 
too they must be made. But his best work has remained 
unhurt by changing tastes and manners. Whatever he wrote 
is touched with the artistic and spiritual grace of sincerity, and 
not even the form of the drama can conceal from us the 
personality of the most poetical and the most lovable of the 
group that surrounded the master. 



r 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 



Bibliographies of Dekker are to be found in Bullen's article in the 
Dictionary of National Biography, in Minto and McKerrow's article in the 
Encyclopaedia Britannica, in Morley's English Writers, in Schelling's 
Elizabethan Drama, in the Cambridge History of English Literature and in 
W. Scheffler's Thomas Dekker als Dramatiker. A list of works, extant, 
non-extant, and conjectural, is given by Fleay in his Biographical Chronicle 
of the English Drama. Complete titles of original editions of the plays and 
pageants are given in the Cambridge History of English Literature, vol. VI ; 
the titles, not always complete, of the long poems and prose works in vol. 
IV. All the authorities mentioned above, except Schelling, give lists. A 
list of extant works corrected from the point of view of the writer of this 
study may be found in the Table of Contents. 

The only large collection of Dekker's plays and pageants is Pearson's 
reprint. The Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, in 4 volumes, London, 
1873. The Mermaid Dekker edited with Introduction by Ernest Rhys in- 
cludes : The Shoemaker's Holiday, The Honest Whore, Old Fortunatus, and 
The Witch of Edmonton. Three plays partly written by Dekker are not 
in Pearson's collection: Patient Grissill, found in vol. V of Grosart's prose 
collection and elsewhere jj T/t^ Noble Soldier, reprinted in Bullen's Old 
English Plays, vol. I (1882) ; and The Weakest Goeth to the Wall, found 
in W. C. Hazlitt's edition of Webster, vol. IV. 

Single plays have been repeatedly reprinted. The plays collaborated 
with Webster, Middleton, Massinger and Ford appear also in the works 
of these writers. Three of the pageants have been reprinted : The Mag- 
nificent Entertainment in John Nichols' Progresses, Processions, and Mag- 
nificent Festivities of King James the First ; Troja Nova Triumphans and 
London's Tcmpe in F. W. Fairholt's Lord Mayors' Pageants. Four of the 
plays have received careful critical editing : The Shoemaker s Holiday, by 
Warnke and Proescholdt, 1886; Patient Grissill, by G. Hiibsch, Erlanger 
Beitrdge, vol. 15, 1893; Old Fortunatus, by H. Scherer, Miinchener Bei- 
trdge, vol. 21, 1901 ; and Satiromastix, also by Dr. Scherer, Materialien zur 
Kunde des dlteren englischen Dramas, vol. 20, 1907. 

The standard edition of Dekker's long poems and prose works is Gros- 
art's Non-Dramatic Works of Thomas Dekker, in 5 volumes, 1884. ' It 
does not include the following pieces : A Knight's Conjuring (altered from 
News from Hell), which has been reprinted by E. F. Rimbault for the 
Percy Society, Publications, vol. 5 ; Penny-wise, Pound-foolish, reprinted 
by W. Bang in his edition of Ford^s Works, Materialien, 1908; and the 
two important Prison sections, added respectively to the 161 6 and the 1632 
editions of Lanthorn and Candlelight. The Gull's Hornbook and The 
Seven Deadly Sins of London have been repeatedly reprinted. 

205 



206 

Critical Commentary 

The following list does not include such general works as those by 
Collier, Fleay, Ward, Schelling, Courthope or Creizenach, or the useful 
introductions and notes belonging to the editions mentioned above. Nor 
does it include, except in a few cases, articles on Webster, Middleton, 
Massinger or Ford, although such articles usually discuss Dekker in some 
aspect of his work. 

Bang, W. Dekker-Studien. Englische Studien, vol. 28. 

Bielefeld, F. The Witch of Edmonton . . . eine Quellenuntersuchung. 

Halle, 1904. 
Boyle, Robert. Introduction to F. A: Gelbcke's translation of Old For- 

tunatus into German. Die englische Biihne zu Shakespeare's Zeit. 

Leipsic, 1890. 
Bullen, A. H. Thomas Dekker. Dictionary of National Biography. 
. Much valuable material scattered by way of notes and introductions 

through his editions of Middleton, Day, and Ford, and his reprint of 

The Noble Soldier. 
Collier, J. P. Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, Founder of Dulwich College. 

Shakspere Society Publications, vol. I. 1841. 
Disraeli, Isaac. Quarrels of Authors. 

Dixon, W. M. Chapman, Marston, Dekker. Cambridge History of Eng- 
lish Literature, vol. VI, ch. 2. 
" Dramaticus." The Players who Acted in " The Shoemaker's Holiday." 

Shakspere Society Papers, vol. IV^ p, no (1849). 
Fritsche, Hermann. Notes appended to his edition of The Shoemaker's 

Holiday. Thorn, 1862. 
Goodcole, Henry. The Wonderful Discovery of Elisabeth Sawyer, a 

Witch, late of Edmonton, her Conviction and Condemnation and Death. 

Reprinted in Bullen's Ford, vol I (1896). 
Greg, W. W. His edition of Henslowe's Diary, Part H, has an article on 

Dekker, a table of the plays written for Henslowe, and notes on the 

plays. 
. Henslowe Papers. The index is a guide to further notes on 

Dekker. 
. On the Authorship of the Songs in Lyly's Plays. Modern Lan- 



guage Quarterly, vol. I. Cambridge, 1905. 
Hazlitt, William. Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of 

Elizabeth, 
Herford, C. H. The Literary Relations of England and Germany in the 

Sixteenth Century. Cambridge, 1886. 
Koeppel, E. Quellenstudien sii den Dramen Chapman's, Massinger s und 

Ford's. Quellen und Forschungen zur Sprach und Culturgeschichte, no. 

82. Strassburg, 1897. 
. Studien iiber Shakespeare's Wirkung auf seitgenossische Dramati- 

ker. Materialien, 1905. 



207 

On this subject, see also Fresh Allusions to Shakspere. New 
Shakspere Society, 1886. 

Kupka, Paul. Uber den dramatischen Vers Thomas Dekkers. Halle, 1893. 

Lamb, Charles. Specimens of English Dramatic Poets, 

Lange, A. F. Introduction to his edition of Thomas Deloney's Gentle Craft 

(source of The Shoemaker's Holiday). Palaestra, vol. 18. Berlin, 1903, 
Lazar, Bela. Uber das Fortunatus-Mdrchen, pp. 79-88, Leipsic, 1897. 
McKerrow, R. B. Thomas Dekker in the Encyclopaedia Britannica (with 

W. Minto). 
Minto, W. See above. 

Penniman, J. H. The War of the Theatres. Boston, 1897. 
Pierce, F. E. The Collaboration of Webster and Dekker. Yale Studies in 

English, 1909. 
Routh, V. R. London and the Development of Popular Literature. Cam- 
bridge History of English Literature, vol. IV, ch. 16. 
Scheffler, Willibald. Thomas Dekker als Dramatiker. 
Schmidt, F. W. V. Critical remarks in connection with his translation of 

Old Fortunatus into German. Berlin, 181 9. 
Small, R. A. The Stage Quarrel between Ben Jonson and the So-called 

Poetasters. Forschungen zur englischen Sprache und Literatur, vol. 1. 

Breslau, 1899. 
Smeaton, O. Preface to his edition of Old Fortunatus. Temple Dramatists. 
Stoll, E. E. John Webster, the Periods of his Work. Boston, 1905. 
• . The Influence of Jonson on Dekker. Modern Language Notes, 

vol. 21. 
Swinburne, A. -C. The Age of Shakespeare (contains the well-known 

essay on Dekker, and also essays on Webster and Middleton). Harper 

and Brothers, 1908. 
. Essays and Studies (contains essay on Ford). Chatto and Windus, 

1888. 
Whipple, E. P. The Literature of the Age of Elisabeth. Cambridge, Mass., 
1886. 



INDEX. 



The Index contains the titles of works, and the names of authors and of 
a few other persons important in Dekker's history — whether found in text 
or notes. It does not cover the Bibliography, nor include the names of 
scholars and critics, which, for the greater part, are given in the Bibliog- 
raphy. Long quotations are indexed under the titles of works. 



Alleyn, Edward, 13, 88, 166-167, 

168, 184n, 185, 196n, 199 
All's Lost by Lust, 197 
Amends for Ladies, 11 On 
Antonio and Mellida, 155n 
Antonio and Vallia, 28n 
Antony and Valia, 28 
Anything for a Quiet Life, 100 
Arches of Triumph, The, 83, 89-90 
Arden of Feversham, 49 
Areopagitica, 131 
Arraignment of Paris, The, 34n 
Artillery Garden, The, 168 
Awdeley, John, 136 
Bachelor's Banquet, The, 8, 86, 87, 

103-104, lis, 123-124, 192 
Bad May Amend, 47n 
Bear a Brain, or Better Late than 

Never, 51 
Beaumont, Francis, 115, 161, 163, 

177, 199 
Bellman of London, The, 110, 135- 

137 
Bellman of Paris, A French Comedy 

of the, 178 
Belphegor, 150 

Bible, The English, 17, 51, 146, 200 
Birth of Merlin, The, 29 n 
Black Book, The, 128 
Blind Beggar of Alexandria, The, 

92 
Blurt, Master Constable, 93, 96, 134 
Bristow Merchant, The, 178, 187- 

188 
Britannia's Honor, 15, 191 



Brome, Richard, 180n, 193 
Caesar's Fall, 47n, 83, 90 
Canaan's Calamity, 9, 52, 117, 191 
Canterbury Tales, The, 5 
Carlell, L., 119, 159, 192-193 
Case is Altered, The, 57n 
Caveat for Cursitors, A, 136-137 
Chamberlain, John, 110 
Chance Medley, A, 49 
Chapman, George, 75, 82, 92, 96, 

102, IDS, 199 
Chaste Maid in Cheap side, A, 95 
Chaucer, 5, 49 
Chettle, Henry, 6, 42n, 48, 50, 59- 

60, 64, 69n, 74, 75-76, 79-80, 84 
Christmas Comes but Once a Year, 

49, 75, 83 
Christ's Tears over Jerusalem, 52 
Civil Wars of France, Introduction 

to the, 47n, 51, 79 
Come See a Wonder, 183, 186 
Connan, Prince of Cornwall, 49 
Crack Me This Nut, 3 In 
Cynthia's Revels, 66, 68n, 72 
Day, John, 26, 50, 63, 75, 82-83, 

109, 110, 111, 116, 177-178, 185- 

186, 191, 198 
Dead Term, The, 17, 41, 123, 134- 

135 
Dedekind, F., 14, 142 
Dekker His Dream, 15, 17, 152, 

165, 167, 173-176 
Dekker relationships, Conjectural, 

13, 78n 



208 



209 



Deloney, Thomas, 52, 56n, 57, 82, 

137 
De Probatis Sanctorum Historiis, 

156 
Devil's Answer to Pierce Penniless, 

The (see News from Hell) 
Devil's Law Case, The, 92 
Dioclesian, 154 
Doctor Faustus, 7, 31, 32-33, 153; 

Dekker's conjectural part in, 33n 
Double P. P., The, 123n, 127-128 
Drayton, M., SO, 82 
Dutch Courtezan, The, 106 
Earl Godwin, 49 
Eastward Ho, 102, 106, 107 
Edward the Second, 16 
Englishmen for My Money, 63 
English Villanies, 12, 194-197 
Essays and Characters of a Prison 

and Prisoners, 169, 171n 
Every Man in His Humor, 74 
Every Man out of His Humor, 53n, 

62 
Exhortation of London unto Her 

Children, The, 8n 
Faerie Queene, The, 5, 36 
Fair Constance of Rome, 49 
Fair Maid of the West, The, 114 
Fair Quarrel, A, 93 
Fairy Knight, The, 17, 178 
Family of Love, The, 111 
Famous Wars of Henry I and the 

Prince of Wales, 85 
Father Hubbard's Tale, 9 
Faust, 153 
Fawn, The, 106 
Field, N., 11 On 
Fletcher, John, 115, 161, 163, 177. 

183-184, 189, 199 
Ford, John, 13, 20, 29, 53-54, 82, 

177, 178, 181, 187, 198 
Fortune's Tennis, 51 
Four Birds of Noah's Ark, The, 14, 

15, 19, 117, 144-146 
Fraternity of Vagabonds, The, 136 
French Doctor, The, 28n 
15 



Friar Rush, 148n 

Friar Rush and the Proud Woman 

of Antwerp, 148n 
Gentle Craft, The (see The Shoe- 
maker's Holiday) 
Gentle Craft, The (by Deloney ; see 

Deloney) 
Goethe, 153 
Golden Ass and Cupid and Psyche, 

The, 49 
Goodcole, Henry, 179 
Greene, Robert, 6, 8 
Greene's Ghost Haunting Cony- 
catchers, 136 
Grobianus, 14, 142 
Groundwork of Cony-catching, The, 

137 
Gull's Hornbook, The, 6, 9, 15, 120- 

121, 123, 131, 142-144 
Guy of Warwick, The Life and 

Death of, 178 
Hamlet (the early), 5, 39n 
Hamlet, 18, lOln 
2 Hannibal and Hermes, 47n 
Harington, Sir John, 16, 118 
Harman, T., 136-137 
Harrison, Stephen, 83, 89 
Harvey, Richard, 9 
Hathaway, Richard, 50 
Haughton, William, 48, 50, 59, 60, 

63 
Henry F, 31 
Henslowe, Philip, 45, 79-80. 82, 

114, 166, 198 
Henslowe's Diary, 28, 29, 38, 47-52, 

53, 64, 75, 79, 80, 85, 93, 183n, 

194n 
Heywood, Thomas, 50, 75, 82, 83, 

84, 177, 180n, 203 
Hoffman, 42n, 76 
Holinshed, 16, 76 
Holy Living, 146 
Honest Whore, The, 7, 47, 51, 52, 

60n, 81, 90, 91-92, 93-101, 103, 

109, 114, 117, 155n, 168, 192, 

201, 203 



210 



Humorous Day's Mirth, A, 92 

Huon of Bordeaux, 178n 

// It be not God, the Devil is in It, 
7, 8, 147-154, 155-156, 159, 160, 
180, 185n 

// You Know not Me, You Knew 
Nobody, 39n 

Isle of Dogs, The, 10 

Isle of Gulls, The, 37, 102n 

Jephthah, 49, 50, 51, 85 

Jests to Make You Merry, 80, 115, 
122, 123, 133-134, 135; see also 
The Misery of a Prison and a 
Prisoner 

Jew of Malta, The, 63, 154 

Jew of Venice, The, 28-29n 

Jocundo and Astolfo, 178 

Jonson, Ben, 15, 48, 50-51, 57n, 
62-63n, 65-75, 79, 82 87-88, 91, 
102, 106, 177, 198 

Jourdan, S., 17 

King Sebastian of Portugal, 49, 64 

King of Swedland, The, 178 

Knight's Conjuring, A, 1, 4-5, 8, 
S5n, 117, 129n, 130-131 

Kyd, Thomas, 5 

Lady Jane, 75, 83 ; see Sir Thomas 
Wyatt 

Lanthorn and Candlelight, 2, 12-13, 
83, 118, 135-139, 150n, 168; for 
ed. of 1616 and 1620, see 
Villanies Discovered; for ed. of 
1632 and 1638, see English Vil- 
lanies 

Late Lancashire Witches, The, 180n 

Lenten Stuff, 9n 

Locrine, 19n 

London's Tempe, 192 

Look about You, 5 In 

Love's Metamorphosis, 9, 32n 

Lust's Dominion, 63 

Lyly, John, 6, 31-32, 33, 38-39, 53- 
54, 64, 112, 198; for songs for- 
merly attributed to, 54n 

Machiavelli, 16 

Mack, The, 183n 



Mad Pranks of Merry Moll of the 

Bankside, 109 
Mad World, My Masters, A, 95 
Magnificent Entertainment, The, 87- 

89, 90 
Maid of Honor, The, 156 
Maiden of Confolens, The, 84n 
Malcontent, The, 106 
Marlowe, Christopher, 6, 7, 16, 32- 

33, 82, 153, 180, 198 
Marston, John, 20, 66-67, 69n, 70, 

73, 75, 79, 84n, 91, 102, 106, 

155n, 177, 198, 199 
Martin Mark-all, 13, 74n, 136 
Mary Frith, Life and Death of Mis- 
tress, 11 On 
Massinger, Philip, 28, 154, 155, 

156-157, 159, 177, 199 
Match Me in London, 107n 159- 

164, 187, 192-193 
May Day, A, 92 
Measure for Measure, 92, 95 
Medicine for a Curst Wife, 51, 75 
Meres, F., 12, 28 
Merry Wives of Windsor, The, 92, 

104 
Michaelmas Term, 95, 96n 
Midas, 32n 
Middleton, T., 9, 20, 48, 50, 52, 

54n, 82, 90, 92-93, 94, 95-96, 

100, 106, 109-111, 113, 116, 128, 

134, 177 
Midsummer Night's Dream, 18, 36, 

38, 39n 
Milton, 131 
Misery of a Prison and a Prisoner, 

18-19; see Jests to Make You 

Merry 
Mother Bombie, 6 
Munday, Anthony, 42, 49n, 50, 51, 

66, 79, 83, 84 
Mynshul, Geffray, 169, 170, 171n, 

172n, 173 
Nash, Thomas, 4, 5, 7, 8-9, 10, 18, 

21, 52, 128-129, 130, 155n, 198, 

199 



211 



Nezvs from Hell, 4, 8, 128-130, ISO 
Noble Soldier, The, 185-186, 187 
Noble Spanish Soldier, The (see 

The Noble Soldier) 
Northern Lass, The, 193 
Northward Ho, 16, 60, 83, 90, 91- 

92, 101, 102-103, 105-108, 109, 

114, 115 
Ode prefixed to The Arches of 

Triumph, 90 
Ode to Munday, 84 
Old Fortunatus, 7, 8, 25, 28, 29-35, 

39, 45, 46, 48, 61n, 117, 201, 203 
Old Law, 93 
Old Wives' Tale, The, 8 
Orestes' Furies, 51 
Othello, 94, lOln 
Overthrow of Rebels, The, 75n 
Page of Plymouth, 48, 50-51 
Palmerin of England, 83, 84 
Parliament of Bees, The, 185-186 
Patient Grissill, 6, 16, 23, 33, 39, 

48, 50, 51, 59-63, 76, 144 
Patient Grissell, The Play of (by 

John Phillips), 59n 
Peele, George, 6, 7, 8 
Penny-Wise, Pound-Foolish, 188- 

189, 192 
Phaeton, 29, 79 ; see The Sun's 

Darling 
Philenzo and Hypollita, 28n 
Philipo and Hippolito, 28 
Phoenix, The, 100, 111 
Pierce Penniless, His Supplication 

to the Devil, 4, 128 
Piers Plowman, 17 
Pleasant History of Friar Rush, 

The, 150 
Poetaster, The, 66-67, 68n, 69-73 

passim 
Pontius Pilate, 49, 75 
Porter, Endymion, 168 173 
Quinze Joyes de Mariage, Les, IS, 

124 
Raven's Almanac, The, 120, 139- 

141, ISln 



// Return from Parnassus, 67n 

Richard H, 39n 

Roaring Girl, The, 90, 92, 103, 109- 

114, 147, 159, 160 
Robert H, King of Scotland, 66 
Rod for Runaways, A, 189-190 
Romeo and Juliet, 18, 45, lOln 
Rowlands, Samuel, 9, 13, 74n, 135- 

136, 138 
Rowley, Samuel, 185-186, 187 
Rowley, William, 56n, 57n, 178, 

180n, 181, 197 
Sale, Antoine de la, 124n 
Sapho and Phao, 32n 
Satiromastix, 9, 18n, 49n, 60, 63, 

64-75, 103, 114, 117, 120 
Set at Maw, The, 160n 
Seven Deadly Sins of London, The, 

17, 40-41, 116, 119-120. 123, 

131-133, 139 
Seven Wise Masters, The, 49 
Shakespere, 3, 9, 18, 53, 59, 67, 75, 

82, 91, 92, 93, 115, 163, 182, 199, 

200, 204 
Sharpham, Edward, 75 
Shoemaker's a Gentleman, A, S7n 
Shoemaker's Holiday, The, 16, 19, 

33, 39, 45, 56-59, 106, 117, 168, 

200-201, 203 
Sir John Mandeville's Travels, 17 
Sir John Oldcastle, 75 
Sir Thomas Wyatt, The Famous 

History of, 50, 75-78 ; see also 

Lady Jane 
Smith, W., SO, 75 
Spanish Fig, The, 187n 
Spanish Moor's Tragedy, The, 49n, 

63 
Spenser, 5, 10, 16, 38, 75, 134 
Stewtly, 49n 
Stow, 16 
Strange Horse Race, A, 5, 15n, 139, 

ISOn, 160, 165; for song in, 27 
Stukeley, The Famous History of 

the Life and Death of Captain 

Thomas, 49n 



212 



Sun's Darling, The, 26, 29, 39, 52- 

56, 81, 178 
Tamburlaine, 7, 33 
Taming of the Shrew, The, 59n 
Tasso, 75 

Tasso's Melancholy, 75 
Taylor, Jeremy, 146 
Taylor, John, 147 
Theatrum Poetarum, 42 
Titus Andronicus, 63 
Trick to Catch the Old One, A, 95, 

111 
Triplicity of Cuckolds, The, 51-52 
Troilus and Cressida (by Dekker 

and Chettle), 49 ; possible plot of, 

49n 
Troja Nova Triumphans, 14, 164- 

165 
Truth's Supplication to Candlelight, 

38, 47n, 51 
Two Harpies, 47n 
Two Shapes, 47n 

Villanies Discovered, 168-178, 194 
Virgin Martyr, The, 7, 28, 152, 154- 

159, 168, 177, 18Sn, 201, 203 
Wars, Wars, Wars, 191 
Weakest Goeth to the Wall, The, 

16, 42-45 



Webster, John, 26, SO, 75, 76-78, 
82, 83-84, 89, 92, 106-108, 116, 

177, 199 

Westward Ho, 31n, 45, 75, 83, 90, 

91-92, 101-108, 114, 115 
What You Will, 70 
White Devil, The, 83, 148 
Whore of Babylon, The, 14, 19, 21, 

24n, 29, 36-42, 45, 46, 51, 76, 

103, 114, 117 
Wilkins, George, 134 
Wilson, Robert, 50 
Wisdom of Solomon Paraphrased, 

The, 52 
Witch of Edmonton, The, 3, 53, 

158, 168, 178-183, 203 
Women beware Women, 93 
Wonder of a Kingdom, The, 166, 

178, 183-186, 197 
Wonderful Discovery of Elizabeth 

Sawyer, The, 179 
Wonderful Year, The, 1, 3, 8, 40, 

86-87, 115, 117, 121-122, 123, 

124-127 
Work for Armorers, 18, 81, 115- 

116, 118, 141-142 
Worse Afeard than Hurt, 47n 
Yorkshire Tragedy, The, 49n 



THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 

Columbia University in the City of New York 




The Press was incorporated June 8, 1893, to promote the publication 
of the results of original research. It is a private corporation, related di- 
rectly to Columbia University by the provisions that its Trustees shall be 
officers of the University and that the President of Columbia University 
shall be President of the Press. 



The publications of the Columbia University Press include works on 
Biography, History, Economics, Education, Philosophy, Linguistics, and 
Literature, and the following series : 

Colambia University Anthropological Series. 

Columbia University Biological Series. 

Columbia University Studies in Classical Philology. 

Columbia University Studies in Comparative Literature. 

Columbia University Studies in English. 

Columbia University Geological Series. 

Columbia University Germanic Studies. 

Columbia University Indo-Iranian Series. 

Columbia University Contributions to Oriental History and 

Philology. 
Columbia University Oriental Studies. 

Columbia University Studies in Romance Philology and Liter- 
ature. 
Blumenthal Lectures. Hewitt Lectures. 

Carpentier Lectures. Jesup Lectures. 

Julius Beer Lectures 
Catalogues will be sent free on application. 



Lemcke & BuECHNER, Agcnts 

30-32 WEST 27th ST., NEW YORK 



THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 



STUDIES IN ENGLISH 



Joseph Glanvill. By Ferris Greenslet, Ph.D., Cloth, lamo, pp. xi + 23S, 

$1.50 net. 
The Elizabethan Lyric. By John Erskine, Ph.D., Qoth, i2mo, pp. xvi 

+ 344, $1.50 net. 
Classical Echoes in Tennyson. By Wilfred P. Mustard, Ph.D., Cloth, 

izrao, pp. xvi + 164, $1.25 net. 
Sir Walter Scott as a Critic of Literature. By Margaret Ball, Ph.D., 

Paper, 8vo, pp. x + 188, $1.00 net. 
The Early American Novel. By Lillie Deming Loshe, Ph.D., Paper, Svo, 

pp. vii + 131, $1.00 net. 
Studies in New England Transcendentalism. By Harold C. Goddard, 

Ph.D., Paper, Svo, pp. x + 217, $1.00 net. 
A Study of Shelley's Drama "The Cenci." By Ernest Sutherland 

Bates, Ph.D., Paper, Svo, pp. ix + 103, $1.00 net. 
Verse Satire in England before the Renaissance. By Samuel Marion 

Tucker, Ph.D., Paper, Svo, pp. xi + 245, $1.00 net. 
The Accusative with Infinitive and Some Kindred Constructions in 

English. By Jacob Zeitlin, Ph.D., Paper, Svo, pp. viii + 177, $1.00 nef. 
Government Regulation of the Elizabethan Drama. By Virginia Cro- 

cheron Gildersleeve, Ph.D., Cloth, Svo, pp. vii + 259, $1.25 net. 
The Stage History of Shakespeare's King Richard the Third. By Alice 

I. Perry Wood, Ph.D., Cloth, Svo, pp. xi + 1S6, $1.23 net. 
The Shaksperian Stage. By Victor E. Albright, Ph.D., Cloth, Svo, pp. 

xii + 194, $1.50 net. 
Thomas Carlyle as a Critic of Literature. By Frederick W. Roe, Ph.D., 

Cloth, Svo, pp. xi + 152, $1.25 net. 
The Authorship of Timon of Athens. By Ernest Hunter Wright, Ph.D., 

Cloth, Svo, pp. ix + 104, $1.25 net. 
English Tragicomedy, Its Origin and History. By Frank H. Ristine, 

Ph.D., Cloth, Svo, pp. XV + 247, $1.50 net. 

Lemcke & Buechner, Agents 
30-32 West 27th Street New York 



THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 

STUDIES IN ENGLISH 



Leigh Hunt's Relations with Byron, Shelley and Keats. By Barnette 

Miller, Ph.D. 8vo, cloth, pp. vii + 169, $1.25 net. 
The Rise of the Novel of Manners. By Charlotte E. Morgan, Ph.D. 

8vo, cloth, pp. ix + 271, Price, $1.50 net. 
John Dennis. His Life and Criticism. By Harry G. Paul, Ph.D. 8vo, 

cloth, pp. viii + 229. Price, $1.25 net. 
New Poems by James I. of England. By Allan F. Westcott, Ph.D. 8vo, 

cloth. Price, $1.50 net. 
The Middle English Penitential Lyric. By Frank Allen Patterson, 

Ph.D. 8vo, cloth. Price, $1.50 vet. 
The Exemplum in the Early Religious and Didactic Literature of Eng- 
land. By Joseph Albert Mosher, Ph.D. 8vo, cloth, pp. xi + 150. 

Price, $1.25 net. 
The Soliloquies of Shakespeare. By Morris LeRoy Arnold, Ph.D. 8vo, 

cloth, pp. X + 177. Price, $1.25 net. 
The Political Prophecy in England. By Rupert Taylor, Ph.D. 8vo, 

cloth, pp. XX + 165. Price, $1.25 net. 
Mathew Carey. Editor, Author and Publisher. By Earl L. Brads her, 

Ph.D. 8vo, cloth. Price, $1.25 net. 
Thomas Dekker. A Study. By Mary Leland Hunt, Ph.D. 8vo, cloth. 

Price, $1.25 net. 

STUDIES IN COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 



Romances of Roguery. By Frank Wadleigh Chandler, Ph.D. Part L 

The Picaresque Novel in Spain. i2mo, cloth, pp. ix + 483. Price, 

$2.00 net. 
A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance. By Joel Elias 

Spingarn, Ph.D. Second edition, revised and augmented. 12010, 

cloth, pp. xi 4- 330. Price, $1.50 net. 
Platonism in English Poetry of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Cen- 
turies. By John Smith Harrison, Ph.D. i2mo, cloth, pp. xi + 235. 

Price, $2.00 net. 
Irish Life in Irish Fiction. By Horatio Sheafe Krans, Ph.D. i2mo, 

cloth, pp. vii -}- 338. Price, $1.50 net. 
The English Heroic Play. By Lewis Nathaniel Chase, Ph.D. i2mo, 

cloth, pp. xii -f 250. Price, $2.00 net. 
The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century. By Martha 

Pike Conant, Ph.D. i2mo, cloth, pp. xxvi + 312. Price, $2.00 net. 
The French Influence in English Literature. By Alfred Horatio Upham, 

Ph.D. i2mo, cloth, pp. ix + 560. Price, $2.00 net. 
The Influence of Moliere on Restoration Comedy. By Dudley H. 

Miles, Ph.D. i2mo, cloth, pp. xi + 272. Price, $1.50 net. 
The Greek Romances in Elizabethan Prose Fiction. By Samuel Lee 

Wolff, Ph.D. 121110, doth. Price. $2.00 net. 



Lemcke & Buechner, Agents, 
30-32 West 27th Street New York 



675 



,^4 




r. 

■K -t, ^°^. !. V ^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. ^ 

?■ '^. " ' ^ '8 - Neutralising aaent: Maonesiiim flyiHo 






>:> A. ,- ,\V </*„ . ' r$ "^ Cranberry To 

' -^ . .\^- '^^ - * V,*^ ^. (724)779-21 



\ ^•-" Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 

'■8-, Neutralising agent: Magnesium Oxide 

o ''* '~„ >" Treatment Date: Feb. 2009 

^ " N 

%- ^ PreservationTechnologies 

"^^ .< V ' « WORLD LEADER IN COLLECTIONS PRESERVATION 

^ 111 Thomson Park Drive 

* r$ "Vc Cranberry Township, PA 16066 

* <^ ■^. (724)779-2111 









,0 o 



A- 












^, .-Jv'' 



..:^ •% 



